Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Oct 7, 2015At the end of the day, I enjoy Cherry Bomb, both for it's misanthropic noise and for its funkier and jazzier sides.
-
MojoJun 10, 2015Listen too close to the lyrics and you'll often detect a dispiritingly autopilot misanthropy.... Lose yourself in the music, though, and Cherry Bomb reveals a fevered charm. [Jul 2015, p.89]
-
The WireJun 5, 2015An album whose sustained brilliance reveals both an artist liberated from the need to try too hard, and finally armed with more to express than sarcastic teenage angst. [Jun 2015, p.55]
-
UncutJun 3, 2015The Los Angeles MC-producer hasn't yet made a definitive record. Cherry Bomb isn't it either, but its chaos is invigorating. [Jul 2015, p.83]
-
May 4, 2015Tyler's self-produced new one flows from the Neptunes tribute "Deathcamp" to the summery whimsy of "Find Your Wings."
-
Apr 28, 2015It takes patience to tag along, but hearing Tyler abandon shock for shock’s sake to explore other sides of his oddness is a sign he’s less interested in being rap’s Quentin Tarantino, and more its Wes Anderson.
-
Apr 24, 2015Tyler makes a few more gestures toward maturity, cutting down the lengthy screeds and striking a better overall balance between sweetness and horror. But he continues to struggle to integrate his feelings into his material.
-
Apr 23, 2015Top-loaded with impenetrable stabs at noise-rock-infused rap, Cherry Bomb is a frustrating exhibition of musicality mired in Tyler, the Creator's contrary sensibility.
-
Apr 23, 2015If anything, the album is held back by his ambition--imprudent testing falls short of his usual standards. There are lessons to be learned here, and as a document of Tyler's growth, this may well be looked back upon as a watershed moment.
-
Apr 22, 2015While Cherry Bomb's low moments hold back the album's highlights, hopefully the high points are a sign of things to come.
-
Apr 21, 2015It’s hard to blame Tyler for indulging his whims. These songs work best when you throw out your own ideas about where they should go.
-
Apr 20, 2015Juvenile shock tactics persist, but he’s now channelling his puckish energy into some thrilling experiments and the more time-honoured hip-hop touchstones Tyler brings into the mix.
-
Apr 20, 2015Returning customers who like Tyler the ringleader, or Tyler the producer, will find this to be too much of a good thing, and can embrace the free-form Cherry Bomb as another freaky trip worth taking.
-
Apr 17, 2015Cherry Bomb is his greatest achievement thus far, solidifying his place in the game, with or without the conspicuously absent Odd Future crew.
-
Apr 17, 2015Cherry Bomb is Tyler's greatest creation to date. However, the album is bit of a mess in the beginning, and while Tyler's grown immensely as a producer, his rapping isn't consistently up to par.
-
Apr 17, 2015His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve.
-
Apr 17, 2015Musically, Cherry Bomb finds Tyler taking a step in the right direction by ever-so-slightly removing himself from the world of his early albums and mixtapes, but it’s only a half-measure.
-
Apr 16, 2015Cherry Bomb might be the tightest, leanest Tyler album yet.
-
Apr 16, 2015Cherry Bomb is both impressive in its ambition and absolutely stunning in its aimlessness, weaving countless genres into multi-part suites but still coming off undercooked in its entirety.
-
Apr 15, 2015For all their blown-out abrasion, though, Tyler’s harder tracks never dazzle the way West’s industrial experiments did. They merely cloy.
-
Apr 15, 2015Moments of souled-out bliss are only temporary, pushed aside by jarring, more aggressive fare reportedly stemming from his interest in the music of Death Grips.... These louder tracks are done no favours by the process by which they were engineered: compressed and distorted in a fashion that leaves Tyler's vocals largely inaudible.
-
Apr 14, 2015Musically, he is maturing before our very eyes.
-
Apr 14, 2015There are certainly passages of music on Cherry Bomb as lovely as anything Tyler has created to date. Teenage kicks? The mosh-quotient is fairly low. Possibly the most fun you can have, as ever with Tyler, the Creator, is the joy of deconstruction as you try to work out what the brilliant Mr Okonma is trying to say.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 208 out of 352
-
Mixed: 80 out of 352
-
Negative: 64 out of 352
-
Apr 15, 2015
-
Apr 15, 2015
-
Apr 16, 2015