“Can You (Still) Feel That Light?”: Dissecting “CHROMAKOPIA” 1 Year Later

Let’s go back 1 year’s time. October 28th, 2024. It’s Monday morning. You roll out of bed, put on your pants, throw on a shirt, brush your teeth, and leave for work. It’s cold and there’s a light drizzle, so you blast the heat for most of the ride. You open your Spotify and see that Tyler, the Creator has released a new album. You eagerly click it, but opt to wait until you’re at work to give it a thorough listen.

Finally, you arrive. You put the key in the door, walk in, and begin opening procedures, but before you begin, you grab your headphones, pull up a chair, and press play. I don’t know what your morning routine consisted of that day, but this was mine.

I remember feeling exhausted from the previous night, but immediately getting a jolt as soon as I heard the opening line of “St. Chroma”:

“You are the light.”

And then begins the call. It’s like a hawk swooping in for the kill. Eerie. Unsettling.

And then he says it again. And again and again and again: “Chromakopia”. That one word that has become synonymous with Tyler, the Creator at this point because up until now, no one had ever heard it. Why is that? Because it’s not a word at all but rather an amalgamation of two.

“Chroma”; the purity or intensity of color.

“Copia”; the latin derivative of “copious” or “abundance”.

These words have no real symbolism outside of the context in which he uses them, but when put together, one could aptly assume this title means “Abundance of Color.” Throughout most of the album’s press run, Tyler can be seen wearing green for a large portion of it, but even the color green can be used as a mechanism to further the plot of this album. It’s associated with growth or freshness. New beginnings.

Tyler, the Creator, c. 2024

Now, you’ll probably read most of this and assume I’m reaching when there’s nothing to grab onto until you listen to the album and really dissect what it is he’s saying on it. This album deals with themes of guilt, shame, loss, anxiety, and pretty much every negative connotation that comes with them, not only from Tyler’s point-of-view, but the people closest to him.

Although, Tyler is the star, his mother is a huge part of this story, and serves as a narrator and “guide” of sorts, but we’ll get more into that later on in this article.

The first half of the album offers us our first conflict:

“Paranoia”

Tyler is essentially looking in the mirror, or rather he’s afraid to because this reminds him of how finite he really is. Once one has achieved everything they ever wanted, they have to ask themselves, “what’s next?” Tyler has reached a level of stardom that most will only ever DREAM of attaining. But with fame comes doubt, with doubt comes fear, and with fear comes paranoia.

Tyler as seen in the “NOID” video.

Tyler feels as if he’s being watched wherever he turns. His mom and a select few others seem to be the only ones he can trust and it seems that even when he does offer some kind of vulnerability, things always seem to turn bleak very quickly. Whether it be the crazed STAN trying to crawl into his skin on “COLOSSUS” or his lover dying of a terminal illness on “Judge Judy”, Tyler always seems to draw the burnt match in these hypothetical situations. It’s hard to remain optimistic when life seems to piss on you at every opportunity.

I wanna tell you that things get better from here, but the truth is, they don’t. This leads us to our next theme :

“Self Doubt”

Even though the tone is triumphant and the production is upbeat, there’s still an undertone of self doubt in Tyler’s voice. It’s a perfect example of how all the money in the world can’t buy you happiness. Even though Tyler is doing everything he said he’d do, he still seems to question himself. Whether he deserves it, whether he’s done enough. It’s both humbling and sad.

It’s a testament of the struggles that come with low self esteem and HUGE expectations set on one by themself and the self anguish of trying to be different in a world that wants nothing more than to make you conform.

Conforming is something that Tyler has never been capable of doing. He’s made a career out of saying “fuck you” to the establishment and doing whatever he wants when he wants. Still, it doesn’t fill the void inside which leads me to my last and

final point:

“Acceptance”

Every year around the time of release, Tyler has a new allegation or story come out about something he said or did at some point in his career. Its become something of a running joke or tradition at this point.

Disregarding all those controversies, the one underlying issue in all these old songs was the internal conflict between himself and his nonexistent father. It’s a love/hate relationship. At times, it’s easy to misinterpret the “love” as simply “hate”, but one doesn’t get to this point without feeling something else at one point. Although, the actual end is on “I Hope You Find Your Way Home”, the ACTUAL ending to ME is found on “Like Him”.

The first time I heard this song, I was immediately taken aback. I couldn’t listen to it again right away. I needed a moment to process it and really think about what I had just heard.

Tyler’s mother has an admission of guilt. She tells Tyler his father was never a deadbeat at all, but that she essentially pushed him away. He always wanted to be there for him growing up, but simply couldn’t. She put such a strain on their relationship that Tyler had essentially hated him before he ever even got the chance to know him. Even then, Tyler still couldn’t help but wonder: “why? Why not me? What did I do wrong?”

Underneath the mask (and I do mean mask quite literally) is a little boy looking for validation and acceptance from the father he never knew and in failing to do so, it made him bitter. Pessimistic. But deep down inside is a little boy seeking validation from the “ghost” he’s been chasing all along.

“Do I look like him?”

I felt so bad in that moment that it genuinely made me upset. It angered me. Being that I grew up in a somewhat broken home, my father was really all I had at one point. He raised me and my brother and made sure we never needed, wanted, or went without.

I can say with pride that I had the best dad growing up and I couldn’t understand or fathom the idea of a mother CHOOSING to raise her child alone and essentially ROBBING him and his father of a relationship with one another because of her own selfish ways. It didn’t and still doesn’t register in my head. Not with his family, not with my family, not with anyone’s.

And honestly, she doesn’t seem to understand why she did this either, given her only real response was, “I was young”. In the same breath though, she apologizes and asks for forgiveness. It’s very apparent she carries a great deal of guilt and doesn’t blame the father in this situation and asks that Tyler doesn’t blame himself either, but this is a SMALL gesture given how much she’s taken.

I cannot imagine the existential crisis that Tyler had after this revelation. His entire career, his entire outlook on life warped in seconds. I have no shame in admitting that I cried when listening to this song initially but not just in the sense of grief but also understanding. I get it. Trauma is a cycle. It doesn’t begin and end with one person, it affects everyone involved. It’s up to you whether you break that chain or continue to fall deeper and deeper into the hole.

Tyler has chosen the former and it’s not only made him a better artist but a better person because of it.

“I’m everything that I strived to be.”

I won’t speak for him or assume he holds his mother at fault, but they seem to be quite close given how much influence she has on this

project.

A young Tyler and his mother

She’s his voice of reason. The voice in the back of his mind whenever he has feelings of inadequacy. She’s his light and in being so, he’s finally been able to heal and bloom like the flowers he’s always mentioned throughout his career. Green isn’t just the color of an outfit for him. It’s a sign of growth and change and this album was unlike anything else he’s made before.

This album blew me away on the first listen and it blows me away a year later. The production, the lyrics, the euphemisms, everything was nearly perfect. Every song didn’t resonate with me or move me the way others did, but I do like the themes of death or killing ones old self in favor of a more “typical” version. It’s just another example of Tyler’s decades long feud with his self identity.

In this life, I feel we all wanna feel like we belong or like there’s more to life than what you see at face value and now that Tyler has found his purpose, he wants nothing more than for you to do the same, hence the words:

“I hope you find your way home.”

Everything has finally come full circle. This album is the culmination of Tyler’s entire career. From Ace and Wolf Haley to Churbum and Tyler Baudelaire, Tyler finally seems like he’s found his footing and can say this with no self doubt and that’s honestly dope to see. And the scariest part is with his ever evolving career, I don’t think he’s even close to being finished, but if he were to hang it up tomorrow, I can’t think of a better curtain call than this.

“But Ty, what about “DON’T TAP THE GLA-“

You shut your damn mouth.

A year ago, I gave “CHROMAKOPIA” a 9.5.

One year later, I’m giving “CHROMAKOPIA+” a 9.6. Thank you for FINALLY releasing “Mother”. And the cover is SICK.

So, with all that being said, happy 1 year anniversary to an absolute masterpiece.

If you made it this far, I thank you for listening to my inner voice and I hope that you’ll stick around and read some more. This blog is getting fuller by the day, but the quality will never decline (or so I tell myself).

And if by some small, minuscule, very, very, very, very, VERY minute chance that Tyler happens to read this, come back and see us again. Alabama misses you.