IGOR

As someone who’s been a Tyler fan since the earlier days, IGOR feels like the album where everything he had been experimenting with finally clicked.

This isn’t the Tyler of Goblin or Wolf, and it isn’t even really the Tyler of Flower Boy. IGOR feels like its own universe. The distorted synths, rough mixes, pitched vocals and strange transitions shouldn’t sound this beautiful together — but they do. It feels deliberately imperfect, almost like you’re listening to an old tape that contains someone’s memories.

What makes IGOR special, though, is the story underneath all of that production.

It’s basically the sound of someone falling completely in love, realizing that love isn’t being returned in the same way, becoming jealous and desperate, and eventually having to accept that it’s over. From “EARFQUAKE” and the excitement of wanting someone to stay, through “A BOY IS A GUN”* and “PUPPET,” all the way to “GONE, GONE / THANK YOU” and “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?”, the album feels like one long emotional cycle.

And Tyler doesn't make himself the hero of it. Igor can be jealous, obsessive, selfish, vulnerable and genuinely heartbroken. That's part of why it feels so human.

The sequencing is probably one of its greatest strengths. I rarely want to listen to individual songs from IGOR without eventually wanting to hear the whole record. Songs bleed into each other, melodies return, little sounds suddenly become important later. It rewards listening from beginning to end.

As an older Tyler fan, that's also what makes the album so satisfying. You can hear pieces of the artist he always was — the weird chords, Pharrell influence, distorted production, dark humor and refusal to make conventional music — but now they're being used with much more purpose.

My only reason for not giving it a perfect 10 is that its deliberately muddy, distorted production can occasionally work against it, and there are moments where the concept matters more than the individual song. But those imperfections are also part of IGOR's identity.

Favorite tracks: GONE, GONE / THANK YOU, NEW MAGIC WAND, A BOY IS A GUN*, EARFQUAKE, ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?

Final verdict: 9.5/10

IGOR isn't just one of Tyler's best albums. It's the record where he proved that all the weirdness that made people love him in the first place could grow into something genuinely beautiful without losing what made Tyler Tyler.