Music: Tyler, The Creator: Callous Poetry

Review of Tyler, The Creator's fantastic new video for his track "Yonkers"

I just cannot get enough of this video. It's unbelievably good. Displayed with just a single shot of rapper Tyler, throughout the video, the camera blurs in and out of focus of him sitting on a stool.

The video opens with him sitting in a Greek-God-like pose (perhaps the story of the video resembles that of a particular Greek Myth). When the rapping starts Tyler suddenly turns from his side to address the camera and 'break the fourth wall', thus directly interacting with the audience via eye contact; perhaps enabling surreal video immersion for the viewer.

Soon after this a cockroach meanders over his hand, scribbled with the word 'KiLL'. Tyler obliges this scribbled command by crunching the cockroach in his mouth. His body immediately reacts to this, and so does the camera, as it slowly zooms out of the close-up display of Tyler to a medium close-up shot of him; whilst this happens his images digresses to a silhouette, blurring in and out of focus, as he regurgitates the cockroach.

Lyrically, Tyler is callously anapestic, as he 'disses' Jesus, and utterly rips into the popular music celebrity pairing of Bruno Mars and B.o.B. In the video when the music slows down to an almost melancholic tone as he unbuttons his shirt, he seems to calm his lyrical anger. The music suddenly speeds up when he finishes unbuttoning his shirt though; this is when he unleashes his lyrical scathing on his victims Bruno Mars and B.o.B. When he has finished this attack, the camera zooms into a tight close-up of Tyler, depicting his eyes as having transformed to those of a reptile.

The end of the video though makes it a tragic and chilling masterpiece; a noose  is presented to him, which he accepts in an existential manner. He then hangs himself, as he stands on the stool with the noose around his neck, which leaves the audience with a shiver catapulted down their spine. As a filmmaker myself, this is a fantastic inspiration for me.

Tyler, The Creator is a breathe of fresh air for the Hip-Hop community, as along with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Mos Def, Kid Cudi and various other artists, he continues to break away from the commercial boundaries of Hip-Hop with his experimental and thought provoking lyrics and mannerisms. He is exactly the kind of artist rap needs in a world full of Flo Rida and Rick Ross wannabees (having said that I don't mind Rick Ross - I just think that he is a Miami version of 50 Cent, but at times even more pimped up and ridiculous), as great rappers from the past such as Snoop, Dre, Shady and Weezy (and even Lupe!) fail, in my opinion, to continue achieving great things artistically; they are however achieving great things commercially. That is where Hip-Hop faulters much of the time, as it too often seems to be more about the money and the 'bling' rather than the great lyrical and visual art which Hip-Hop is so capable of being.

Check out the youtube link for the video below!