Call Me If You Get Lost

While the production here is as slick as IGOR, though, there’s less of a through line. IGOR was the devastating pieced-together parts of a broken relationship. CMIYGL plays fast and loose with its subjects, relying instead on the music itself to carry listeners through. ... Tyler, the Creator continues to defy expectations.

Tyler's music has always been a patchwork of ever-increasing palettes, and CMIYGL is his most complex to date. Recurring tricks are masterfully melded into new templates.

Tyler has delivered a project that yet again pushes the boundaries of his music while simultaneously being a culmination of everything that he's done so far. It's yet another impressive outing for an artist whose reign doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon.

The 17-track project finds Tyler leaning into his rap prowess and flexing more bars than on previous efforts like 2017’s critically acclaimed yet sonically lighter album Flower Boy. ... The blatant dichotomy between emotiveness and almost blind arrogance peppers nearly every track, shedding even more light on who Tyler is beneath the surface.

Call Me If You Get Lost doesn’t strike the same emotional resonances as Tyler’s last two LPs, but it isn’t meant to. ... hat’s the crowning achievement of this record—the way it sharply reminds every listener that the early entries in an artist’s discography are not parts of their past meant to be forgotten.

“Call Me If You Get Lost” is undoubtedly a strong showing by Tyler, The Creator, to say the very least. Despite this album’s fantastic structuring and delivery, however, something that is always to be expected with this artist is that what he creates next will undoubtedly be even better.

It grants him the freedom to play with tone, to write personally or use his gravelly voice as texture, to treat the harshest raps and the most delicate hooks as mad experiments gone wrong.

To Tyler’s credit, he didn’t rest on his laurels. Instead, he crafted a concise piece of work about a very confident adult realizing his own ego is both his best asset and indeed his worst enemy.

Call Me If You Get Lost finds Tyler freer than he was on IGOR. He’s managed to combine talents in front of and behind the mic, while amalgamating the serious personalities he used prior with the humor that trademarked his early work. He’s displaying lessons learned here.

A strong addition to Tyler’s catalogue and a good intergenerational connection for the fans. [Aug 2021, p.69]

By taking the time to delve back into his rap upbringing, he’s progressed further, gleefully throwing a ton of ideas at the wall and finding that nearly all of them stick.

A tauntingly good hip-hop album, or a rewiring of pop DNA: “Call Me if You Get Lost” has it both ways. ... Intersections of cocksureness and anxiety are this album at its best. (Fittingly, the title “Call Me if You Get Lost” reads either as a statement of generosity or a plea, depending on your lens.) Songs like the less emotionally ambiguous “Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance” are generally less impactful — Tyler thrives on discord.

Though not as brash as Goblin, nor as polished as IGOR, Call Me delivers consistent performances—and the artistic leaps Tyler’s made over the past four years are palpable in the album’s most boastful and somber moments.

Gripping. ... The evolution on display on “Call Me If You Get Lost” is more elemental; he’s rethinking what kinds of stories he wants to use his music to tell and how much of himself his success obliges him to reveal.

The rapper’s signature self-awareness has matured into some of the more compelling rap music being made today, and as such Call Me If You Get Lost proves to be Tyler’s best effort to date.

CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST has no central theme or concept. However, where Tyler, The Creator shines on this project is how beautifully he fuses together the youthful angst of his earlier output with the older, more introspective side we have seen from more recent releases.

The record stands as an all-encompassing culmination of Tyler’s ever-varying sound, showing that growth isn’t always linear and that artists can be a multitude of things. On ‘Call Me…’, Tyler cements his place as a generational talent, one in fine form and continuing to push the boundaries of his vision and kaleidoscopic sound.