Tyler’s not blind to the racial politics of his celebrity as he sees it, he’s a black rapper who appeals to kids who wish they had black cultural authenticity, and he clearly doesn’t know what to do with that. The breakout smash, “Sandwitches,” has become a song for white people who hate their privilege to scream about hating their privilege. Tyler continues to threaten his army of bloggers with dismemberment and impalement. Tyler exposes his character on the album’s first track, where he lays out his preference for Badu and Pusha-T over Immortal Technique in a response to those that’d criticize him for not being “real” enough with the defense that Goblin’s simply “not made for them.”Īnd Tyler’s bizarre, spiteful relationship with his fans has, of course, seeped into the atmosphere of Goblin. So the ultra hip references abound “Yonkers” alone finds Tyler citing Adventure Time, Pitchfork, Rugrats, The Flinstones, and his vitriolic hatred of Bruno Mars, and it's not a put-on. Without it, there is no “Free Earl,” no hype, no swag, no “fu ck the police.” Without the idea that Tyler emerged from his audience of social network usernames, he’d be unrecognizable. For surely Tyler, all gall and admirable naivety, following a chorus of “Kill People! Burn Shi t! F uck School!” with a straight faced assurance that he’s not advocating for the committing of crimes can’t be serious, right? If he is, where the hell does he get off? But remember that Odd Future and particularly Tyler’s entire aesthetic is predicated on authenticity. Thus we read a song like “Radicals” as an insincere attempt at positivity, a song that lands with a fat thud without Tyler’s grain of salt.
Much of the Goblin counterhype seems to stem from the theory that Tyler’s ludicrous content is a front, an expression of anxiety over baring his “real” self for fear of being much less interesting.
He ups the sincerity of Bastard, adding multiple dimensions to the two-sided Tyler of 2009 on Goblin, the introspective troublemaker that made “Bastard” and “Inglorious” becomes a suicidal threat and the goofball who made “French” becomes the more imaginatively offensive “Tron Cat.” These exaggerations make Tyler sound almost too real to be ironic, but don’t misconstrue Goblin’s content as failed irony even at it's most bizarre, Goblin is consistently honest. Tyler succeeds in his appointed task, in a way Goblin is a flawed masterpiece, a product of Tyler’s ego allowed and presumably encouraged to speak without filter. The ambitious length is exemplary of the intense pressure on Tyler after his meteoric rise to produce a masterpiece, an issue he also addresses with Dr. It infuses its more unremarkable songs with extended skits that attempt to intimately chronicle Tyler’s devolution into schizophrenia, resulting in five 5+ minute epics. At seventy four minutes, it’s in dire need of an editor.
But Goblin, though it lacks mystery, is certainly as interesting an album, if not moreso. One might say that it’s tougher to enjoy Goblin than it was to enjoy Bastard, which is true. But isn’t it weird that Goblin doesn’t let us in on the joke? He says we’re not supposed to take it seriously, but the shocking bits, such as the narrative of “Golden” and Tyler’s late album meltdown, are a little too horrifying here, too well calculated, too unnerving to have the discomfort totally quelled by the obligatory track where Jasper and Taco get to be annoying twats. As conditioned cynics of the twenty-first century, we can easily read this wreckage as a demented, raw upstart becoming the inevitable parody of himself, Tyler flaming out, his joke getting old. The sight isn’t pretty there’s more rape, threats, fu cks, suicides and faggots than there were on Bastard, almost to the point where they become suffocating. To take Tyler seriously is to see his brilliantly twisted brain splattered on the walls of Goblin’s haunted halls. It’s all fine if it’s ironic, right? Swag? We said shock value, that he was saying what he was saying to fuc k with White America, and that was amusing/awesome in itself. So, on Bastard, there were reasons invented to negotiate with the initial moral imperative to reject him despite his songs being so fu cking good.
Songs about rape, murder, homophobia, and suicide aren’t casual. It’s tempting to not do this it’s too uncomfortable to accept Tyler’s psychotic rants at face value, as the real content of his subconscious coming through his unsettling, disjointed rambles. The key to liking Goblin is taking Tyler seriously. Review Summary: Stabbin' any bloggin hipster with a Pitchfork? Get at me, Tyler.
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