Intro

Tyler the Creator is a popular yet divisive artist. He got his name out into the music world through provocative lyrics and antics with his group Odd Future, but has stayed relevant due to his evolving sound and persona. Throughout his career, Tyler the Creator has changed his style, both sonically and lyrically, but we wanted to know, was this an all-natural evolution? Was this a young artist maturing as he aged, or does the increasing stardom and push from outside entities force artists like Tyler the Creator to become more palatable to mainstream audiences?

How Do We Quantify Specific Emotions Within Music?

There are multiple ways to try to quantify something that is more of a subjective quality, like emotion. We chose to analyze it through his lyrics and metrics like danceability and key. We also collected the data of the publishers, writers, featured artists, did write ups on each song and more. We analyzed all of his albums, Bastard (2009), Goblin (2011), Wolf (2013), Cherry Bomb (2015), Flower Boy (2017), Igor (2019), Call Me If You Get Lost (2021, Also the Deluxe Version, The Estate Sale (2023)), and Chromakopia (2024).

Spreadsheet here

The Trend:

Our model shows that over his career, the lyrical content has trended towards being more positive. We measured this through sorting vocabulary as negative or positive and counting them per song. This was found through a sentiment analysis that analyzed the value of words per song, and averaged the score per song and album.

In the earlier stages of his career, Tyler trended more towards the aggressive and angry side. Bastard and Goblin are the only two albums with songs with an anger songs over a 75 anger level, with 4 in total. Many of his early songs contain graphic lyrics meant for shock value, but as seen in the graph he matured musically, and the average anger/negativity level mellowed out. After his first four albums, he hasn’t had a song past the 50 angry level, and has focused more positive subject matter.

His music also increase in Danceability, as measured by Tunebat, as his discography continues. This shows his music has become more pop influenced and accessible over time.
His music also increase in Danceability, as measured by Tunebat, as his discography continues. This shows his music has become more pop influenced and accessible over time.

The Why:

We explored some theories on why Tyler the Creator’s discography became more positive.

We thought that there might be a relationship between the amount of label control and the negativity/anger level. We had an outlier with the album Bastard, which was self-released for free digitally, so there was no offiical publisher or label. We did not see much of a correlation in our data. While the negativity/anger level lowers, the amount of publishers, BMI, or ASCAP control seemingly has no relationship.

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Link to: 3d Graph

To explore this relationship further, we also made an additional graph, putting the ASCAP and BMI variables in a 3d space. We had a similar conclusion to the previous graph.

Next we looked into how adding in the variable of songs where he collaborated with others changed things. This did not affect our findings either. Even so far as songs like “Thought I was Dead” and “Who Dat Boy,” despite having features and multiple publishers, ended up being some of the most angry on their respective albums.

This graph is much clearer, showing that the negativity and anger in his lyrics has a negative correlation with his age. This makes sense given that Tyler started making music when he was 14, and his career began take shape when he was 17. Following his career, it is visible that this graph also lines up with public events in his life. For example, he began releasing his most positive albums once the music collective he was apart of, Odd Future, fully dissolved. This was the group he rose to fame with, but they also fed into each others edgier and angrier style of music. As he rose from a broke and boundary pushing young artist to successful and famous superstar entering his mid thirties, his subject matter changed alongside him.

Conclusion:

Tyler the Creator has kept his sharp edges despite his maturity of subject matter. While his subject matter has strayed from vulgar rants to more soulful expressions of success and love, he flips between the two when he feels the need. This to us showed that Labels do not have the influence they used to. Tyler’s entire story shows this, even starting his career with an album that lacked any official publishing, gaining popularity through word of mouth and the burgeoning online music scene.