Is this format dead? I ask with caution — this section’s survival as we know it is linked to whether The Media Review Essay, currently appearing limp on the side of the road, is flattened or playing possum. It just seems that all the words about music worth your time or my time aren’t really about music. All my favorite publications (see: Tiny Mix Tapes & lengthy Bandcamp comments) instead opt for context, meaning and implication. Sonics are fast out the window — it is rare/common (in the cool sphere, these words are the same) to find a review that gives any clues on what the hell the music sounds like, and for clear reason: Good God, we are so, so bored.
And so it has gone with Flower Boy. Within the last month of the album’s release, Tyler the Creator’s lofi synth work and deft wordplay have filled many a bedroom speaker, while his interviews and tweets dredged up from 2015 have filled many a word count.
Particularly insulting are the cheap attempts at “investigative journalism” (read: listicles) looking into his coming out that read more like witch hunts, suggesting vague details about his life are more relevant than his explicit word. He addresses this anxiety explicitly on “November”: “What if my music too weird for the masses? / And I’m only known for tweets more than beats.” It’s worth noting that the beats on this thing are better than anything he’s ever posted in caps lock.
Admittedly, it’s not as if every critic who considers Flower Boy in the larger context of Tyler’s discography or his newly-canonical but historically-present queerness or compares it to the recent work of other Odd Future graduates is doing irrelevant work. Perhaps they have the words of Toni Morrison in mind: “[…] criticism is so awful. Not all of it, but much of it. Because the language of the criticism can’t quite reach the plane where the artist is.”
If what she says is true, context becomes the only critique available to listeners. Talking about the art itself isn’t just boring and played out, but impossible — the death of the critic.
This position is one that guts the long-standing function of criticism which tells you whether something is worth your time or not. That function is dead in one sense because everything/nothing (in the cool sphere, these words are the same) is worth your time. Rather, you are here for academic masturbation about the importance of Flower Boy, not to find out if it is good or bad. You can find that out for yourself. It’s been out for a month. You can stream it virtually free of charge. Why did I write this? Why are you still reading? As Tyler says, “boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom (x2).”