Grammy award winning artist, Tyler Okonma, also known as Tyler, The Creator, has released a new album, CHROMAKOPIA, after a long hiatus since CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST: The Estate Sale.
Back in 2021, Okonma’s 6th studio album released CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST to widespread acclaim, praising the new direction the artist has been taking following his previous releases, such as Flower Boy (2017) as well as IGOR (2019), Okonma’s most popular album. However, after the release of a deluxe and expanded edition of CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST (The Estate Sale) in 2023, most people did not expect another album or project from the artist for a while, judging by Okonma’s typically 2-year album release pattern.
On October 16th 2024, Okonma released a teaser on YouTube titled “ST. CHROMA” and all of the artist’s social media pages would go under a rebranding. The teaser depicts Okonma walking through a colorless gray desert, wearing a gray mask and a black military outfit while being followed by other masked individuals. In the background, a minute long snippet of a new song written by Okonma plays in the background and the teaser ends with the reveal of Okonma’s newest project, CHROMAKOPIA.
The teaser was met with a ton of excitement from the public and led to a ton of theories and speculations. Some fans have theorized that the masked individuals that were following Tyler, The Creator in the teaser are artists that were going to be featured on the album, leading people to speculate the appearance of artists such as Kendrick Lamar. Many fans back up this theory with dissecting the music sample, suspecting that the background vocals sound like artists Daniel Caesar and Frank Ocean. Although some are skeptical about Ocean’s involvement in the album due to a long hiatus since the release of Blonde, the speculation was not unwarranted since the release date of CHROMAKOPIA just so happens to be the birthday of the artist.
The release date of the album was released shortly after through Okonma’s Instagram account description. Fans pointed out that the album was not to be released on a weekend or Friday like most albums are, but rather on a Monday. This is significant considering the criticisms that Okonma has made about the music industry’s standard of releasing albums by artists on weekends in the past. “I know people think because of the weekend they can listen to stuff and the streams go up but I think it’s a lot of passive listening, at parties or people get the time to go to the gym, so they’re not really listening,” Okonma explains.
Another detail pointed out by fans was the name of the teaser, “ST.CHROMA”. At first, many people assumed it was the name of the song that was teased in the background of the video, however, as theories progressed, more fans assumed that “ST.CHROMA” is the “main character” of the album. Okonma’s albums are typically named after a character played by himself, meant to tell a story about a part of his personality. For example, In the album IGOR, Tyler, The Creator plays a blonde haired, bowl-cut-having, blue-suit-wearing character of the same name, Igor, which displays a more selfish and jealous part of the artist.
With weekly posts about the album, a marketing campaign similar to most recent music album sensation brat by Charli xcx, multiple posts and art made by fans of the album and along with a merchandise bundle released by “GOLF WANG”, Okonma’s fashion line, CHROMAKOPIA is sure to be Tyler, The Creator’s triumphant return to the experimental hip hop genre.
As October 28th, CHROMAKOPIA has been released on Spotify and other music streaming services.
