CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST CASSETTE SERIES

The Gangsta Grillz conceit allows Tyler some latitude to meander-the platonic-ideal mixtape includes freestyles, original songs, radio singles, snippets of unreleased material-but he gives Call Me enough motifs that they eventually fuse into a spine.

When Tyler’s old Odd Future comrade Domo Genesis rappels into “Manifesto,” he does so under cover of a drastic beat switch that throws the song into chaos. Even within those shorter records are sharp breaks and jagged connections: see the way both “Corso” and “Lemonhead” open with menace before moving to more Technicolor sounds, or the way “Massa” inverts that progression, seeming at first to be brighter only to quickly get dulled out again. Of Call Me’s 16 songs, only five make it to the three-minute mark-and that includes the two marathon affairs, “Wilshire” and “Sweet/I Thought You Wanted to Dance,” which run eight and a half and 10 minutes, respectively. While DJ Drama’s presence is indispensable, it is not the only thing that recalls those old. He’s irresistible even when he’s fucking up the album’s title, as he does on the excellent “Hot Wind Blows,” which reunites him with Lil Wayne. (At times Call Me recalls In My Mind: The Prequel, the 2006 Gangsta Grillz tape by Tyler’s hero, Pharrell.) Drama is at his comedic best, goading on verses or underlining Tyler’s monologues about jet-setting (“A young lady just fed me French vanilla ice cream!”). There are times when the album evokes the grittiest of those tapes- its single reimagines a Gravediggaz song-but it breaks up the heavier cuts with shards of bright pop.

CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST CASSETTE SERIES

It’s an inspired choice, nostalgic but irreverent, and suited perfectly to his strengths: 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.Ĭall Me is hosted by DJ Drama, the animated Philly native whose Gangsta Grillz series includes some of the most essential rap records of the century so far. (Think of how many times you’ve seen advertising for an artist’s “debut album” only to think, “Don’t they have three albums already?”) Call Me If You Get Lost-which is either Tyler, the Creator’s sixth or seventh album, depending on whether or not you count 2009’s Bastard-argues for the mixtape not as a tidy bit of careerist maneuvering, but as an aesthetic tradition.

When digital streaming platforms made it easy to profit off of online-only releases, provided the artist or label owns the rights to what’s uploaded, “mixtape” became a nominal term used cynically to signal which rap records were meant to be taken more seriously than others.

Call me if you get lost cassette