The year is 2022. Armed with their biggest tour budgets to date, plus boundless creativity and showmanship to match, Tyler, The Creator and Kendrick Lamar have the two best hip-hop tours out (or really, any genre) with Call Me If You Get Lost and The Big Steppers, respectively. Which one was better? Your mileage may vary, but both were an elite exercise in theatricality—so much more than just blasting the hits at arena-shaking volume and rapping along every five words, the kind of live experience you’ll think back to weeks, months and even years removed.
Three years later, the Angelenos are once again at dueling points of greatness. Kendrick just dropped the first Super Bowl halftime show that I can honestly say I’ve rewatched no less than 10 times since, with a tour—his first stadium run—set to follow later this spring. Tyler, meanwhile, just hit the road in service of Chromakopia, the album he released last fall, and is already making history with six back-to-back sold out shows in his hometown’s famed Crypto.com Arena. And having seen Tyler on the Call Me tour, at Camp Flog Gnaw, at various other smaller venues, and now this, I can safely say Tyler has a very strong bid for hardest out when it comes to that live stage. I’m not running Chromakopia until the CD skips the way I did his previous two albums, but watching these songs brought to life with more intention than when he was simply using stadiums to debut the new music, it’s hard not to appreciate his vision.
Jenny Grosbach
The album’s narrative and themes are considered to the finest detail, from his costume and the set design (obviously) down to Tyler’s every movement—approximating the poise of a soldier just to lash out into herky-jerky choreography, like he’s a xenomorph breaking out of his human shell. Tyler talks about his bag a lot, and his expensive taste is reflected in the production, with cinematic lighting ranging from warm and breezy blues to the kind of ominous red you’d see in a ‘70s horror film. Pyrotechnics? He had flames ringing off as early as track 2.
There’s a full character arc, as represented by the show’s three acts: taking St. Chroma’s mask off above the crowd (after tossing money out maniacally like Jack Nicholson’s ‘89 Joker), taking time to appreciate his journey thus far playing the old hits on a B-stage that looks like a Kelly Wearstler living room, and returning to Chromakopia’s last few songs as a more confident, no-holds-barred-or-fucks-given version of himself. I left resolute in the opinion that every Tyler show/tour is a must-attend—and with a newfound appreciation for “Judge Judy” and “Balloon” (a show-stopping live Doechii-cameo certainly helped.)
Some other thoughts and questions:
Is it time for Tyler to rap over other producers’ beats?
One of the most electric moments of the night was Tyler’s late-show performance of “That Guy,” which is him freestyling over Kendrick’s GNX track “Hey Now.” Tyler absolutely moonwalked over Mustard’s beat—he doesn’t do this often, so to say the track inspired and lit a fire under him is a given—and it makes one wonder what else Tyler could unlock over beats that he himself didn’t originate. J. Cole, one of this generation’s other preeminent rapper-producers, found himself in a similar spot several years ago, where his inclination to rap over his own production and not even reach out for features became a meme unto itself.
