Album Cover via Tyler, The Creator/Instagram
The Bay Area doesn’t sleep, and neither does Yousef Srour.
Over 10,000 Tyler, the Creator super fans are fiending for entry. Teens, twenty-somethings, and Odd Future acolytes flock in every direction, decked out in Golf Wang, Supreme, and every other department store streetwear brand. They’re the congregants lucky enough to secure $5 tickets to be the first to enter the Odd Future founder’s new world.
It’s the last Sunday night in October, and a long line already snakes around the entrance of the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. A horde of LA natives and transplants are breathlessly excited for the mini burst of clout that will come from being the first to hear CHROMAKOPIA. Technically, the new Tyler album will be released tomorrow morning – roughly six hours after the Odd Future founder takes the stage to “stand in the middle of the venue, lip-syncing to the new sounds.” But Tyler, the Creator understands leak culture, and perhaps he prophesied the woman two rows ahead of me livestreaming the show to her followers on TikTok. Either way, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Word has already gotten out. With three music videos released in eleven days, even the rollout has felt like a whirlwind.
Entering the Clippers’ new techno-dystopian Panopticon requires at least a 40-minute wait. But my sister and I somehow skipped the line and got in within two minutes. Walking into the foyer, another maze of lines greets me. The queue to get to our seats is at least a hundred yards. The line for merchandise is even longer, but the devotees must get a branded piece of the action.
If you have the staying power to make it through the security line, you are transported to a promenade that resembles the merch area at Camp Flog Gnaw. White tents are lined with merchandise. Carts carry overpriced beer and wine. CHROMAKOPIA is emblazoned on a behemoth green shipping container; the new album cover watches over the crowd like T.J. Eckleberg’s eyes.
I can appreciate the Save The Bees tagline printed across all the old Flower Boy merchandise, but the new CHROMAKOPIA swag appears to too closely emulate Kendrick Lamar’s The Pop Out for my tastes. CREATOR is printed in the style of seven-letter California license plate combinations. “I [Heart] Los Angeles” tees are remixed with “I [Mask] CHROMAKOPIA” shirts and hoodies. You can buy GOLF mystery bags and mini CHROMAKOPIA shipping crates and posters and bandanas and totes, but everything feels a little on the nose for an artist who is almost always more imaginative than his peers.
Although tickets are affordable, the sticker shock of the merchandise shouldn’t be shocking if you’ve been to a concert this decade: $100 hoodies, $50 shirts and $45 hats. Even a canvas tote bag is $35. You can argue that Tyler shrewdly recouped the cost of the show via clothing sales, but I was most fascinated by lines of people glued to their phones, willing to wait for hours to buy copious amounts of merch. It’s far past the point of souvenir. The lines were made up of OF junkies who look like they’re trying to win a Tyler look-alike contest: dressed in CMIYGL tees and Flower Boy hoodies and Golf Le Fleurs and collectible GOLF WANG pieces. They look sluggish, itching for the next score. You don’t even need to purchase a seat to get your fix; un-ticketed patrons are granted faux-“album listening event” stubs with QR codes and pictures of the merchandise, in case that was all you came here for.
The layout of the arena offers its own obstacle. My sister and I mistakenly reach the terrace and have to find the elevator to go down a few floors. After briskly walking through a corridor that looks more like a corporate office than a basketball stadium, we arrive at the D’USSE Lounge. As we scan our tickets, I mumble to myself, “If I D’USSE so myself,” before turning to my left and seeing a massive cursive sign with the bolded phrase, “IF I D’USSE SO MYSELF.” Thanks, Hov.
This is probably the only place in the entire Intuit Dome without any lines. Only two souls are standing at the bar, waiting as their bartender pours them pints of beer. The food and beverage area has everything boxed up and ready for the taking. There are chicken tenders and fries, slices of pizza, soda and beer, Travis Scott’s seltzer CACTI and West Coast IPAs. The attendant tells me that I can just grab whatever I want and go, but nothing is free. Dozens of cameras watch above us, carefully monitoring our selections (the fridges and food trays track all movements). I felt like an amnesiac George Jetson, ill-acquainted with the future, even as I was living in it in real time. As I stood there stupefied, an older woman threw her hands in the air, telling me and the steward that she doesn’t mind the convenience. “Who cares?” Elitism means you don’t need to wait in line.
Once we arrive at our CLUB 10 seats, I’m hypnotized by the 14 BRAT-green shipping crates arranged in a cross on the main floor: all of them tagged CHROMAKOPIA. I can’t help but think of the Hunger Games. The only thing missing is Rue’s four-note whistle. Seagulls squawk. Foghorns ring throughout the Intuit Dome. Birds chirp as if we were hanging around the docks in San Pedro.
CHROMAKOPIA isn’t a real word. It’s presumably a combination of the words chroma and cornucopia, alluding to the overwhelming amount of color Tyler is said to bring to an otherwise black-and-white world. He showcases that in the new music videos, ushering vivid color into an otherwise monochromatic existence. And the arena itself is no different. Every single seat has a bright light etched into its right armrest, lighting up the brand new arena with an intense green. But we are living in the numb aftermath of the brat summer. Charli XCX didn’t invent Pantone 3507C’s limeade green, but the association of the color is too fresh and not far enough removed for it to be a similar tone as one of the year’s only other event albums.
My sister and I watch attendees file-in like free-form pointillism. The dots of light on the seats create an ever-changing green mosaic throughout the arena. Then around 9:30 p.m., a smoke screen fills the bottom of the main floor, giving the illusion that the CHROMAKOPIA crates are floating amidst the clouds. The lights dim. Emerging from thin air, Tyler marches onstage wearing a military jacket with three stripes on each arm, a white collared shirt and a tie. There’s golden aiguillette over his right shoulder, and the signature CHROMAKOPIA mask covers his face.
From the first stomps of “St. Chroma,” Tyler, the Creator delivers a full-on spectacle from start to finish. Behind the mask, it’s hard to know whether or not he’s actually lip syncing, but I sense that he’s teasing the choreography from his upcoming CHROMAKOPIA World Tour. Tyler does interpretive dances, staying loose, supplementing the lyrics with hand motions, pop-and-locking to match the beat. His projection fills the silence between songs with tension. His bulging eyes are stylized on a screen with the same shadowed nitrate film featured on the album cover.
The industrial framing of Tyler’s CHROMAKOPIA feels like a chromatic continuation of IGOR, turning from pink to green, from a wig to a mask, from playing a fictional character to an autobiographical figure so honest that Tyler claims he had to hide his face to recite the lyrics publically. I still don’t really understand the deal with those crates, but similar to Ye’s Maison Margiela Yeezus mask, the CHROMAKOPIA mask seemingly protects against the pitfalls of fame and subsequent paranoia. This version of Tyler, the Creator preserves anonymity by smoothing his features and creating a world devoid of color– sans the electric hues of his music.
In the two-and-a-half months since the Clippers’ home first opened to the public, Tyler, the Creator is unfortunately the first artist to host a listening event here. Despite a giant wall of speakers, I can only hear the low-end rattle in the music. Little is audible beyond the bass. I can differentiate chords, but the vocals are crunchy and muffled; the instruments in each arrangement jumble into what sounds like a single, blaring waveform.
The auditorium distinctly roars three times during the night: when Tyler arrives on-set in-character, marching onto the shipping crates; the electric response to Sexyy Red’s verse on “Sticky,” and the applause following Tyler’s brief speech, thanking the crowd for sharing this moment with him. The arena lulls during the IGOR/Call Me If You Get Lost-esque R&B joints, and the raps merely elicit head nods and waves of iPhone recordings. As Tyler departs the stage and the overhead lights flood the space, white light sobers the room. After a few minutes, adjusting to our rattled eardrums, we all simultaneously shuffle out of our seats. The staff hurries us out of the lounge, rushing to end the night, dumping us on the corner of W Century Blvd and S Prairie Ave about half past ten.
A select few stans are so moved that they linger for a final chance at exclusive merch, but most fans figured they could just buy a CHROMAKOPIA box set online and call it a day. The moment is over. We were there in person, but by the time my sister and I reach our parking structure, videos of the event are already circulating on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. If you weren’t physically in attendance, Twitch streamers fill that inter-dimensional void for you. Our exceptionalism was wearing off, and in four short hours, the full album would be streamable via DSPs. The only thing separating us from the rest of the world are a couple of exclusive pieces of fabric hovering around $100 on Grailed.
For all intents and purposes, the CHROMAKOPIA listening party in Inglewood seemed mostly concerned with the consecration of this new “era.” And yet, Tyler, the Creator’s heartfelt message at the end of the performance felt genuine. For the subversive kid from Hawthorne to perform at an arena right down the street from where he grew up is a dream come true. Another sign that he’d officially made it. Before he walked off the stage, Tyler politely asked the audience to go home and listen to the album a second time. Until then, any judgment would seem ill-equipped. But that surely didn’t stop his ravenous fanbase from instantly declaring CHROMAKOPIA a modern classic.
We’re living in an era where media and fans often praise the rollout more than the actual music. CHROMAKOPIA’s listening event only reminded us of that. It doesn’t matter what was pasted on the merch; it could be a plain-faced mask or a Supreme logo tee swapped with a shipping crate. In an era where we encourage aestheticism and sales and metrics over the art itself, Tyler, the Creator ingeniously created one of the biggest album events of the year. In a crumbling landscape of algorithms and omnipresent chaos, he was able to turn this dystopian thunderdome into the center of the musical universe. And everything after that felt secondary.
