Tyler The Creator‘s freestyles and album leftovers could form the foundation of one of the best rap albums this year, as bar-for-bar the former Odd Future frontman has become one of the best straight spitters of 2018. His latest release is “Tiptoe,” a two-minute freestyle over Playboi Carti’s “RIP,” the first single from Die Lit.
Whereas Carti’s approach to the beat was more freeform and loose-flowing, consisting of scattered ad-libs and yelping energy, Tyler gets right down to the nitty-gritty raps that have defined recent projects like “Okra” and “Potato Salad.” He spits with a rare ferocity, taking aim at critics on Twitter, cancel culture, and any and all lyrical challengers, telling the latter “we can paint we can, make, whatever / We can Lady Bird, we can Baby Boy, whatever,” referencing his wide-ranging appeal with two coming-of-age flicks that couldn’t be more different from each other to help hammer the point home.
Tyler also brags about the success of his recent album, Flower Boy, despite his shunning traditional promotional methods, boasting that, “Flower Boy gold no gimmicks, I joke / And I ain’t have to f*ck Akademiks to post / No radio play like once, or so / No single video went viral, I know.” It’s nice to see The Creator rattling off the kind of rhymes he always had in him, and it looks like whatever the roadblock was, it’s out of the way now. With renewed confidence and presumably more bars in the stash, it looks like 2018 is officially Tyler season.
