Tyler, the Creator, who teased new music on social media yesterday, has announced his new album, “Chromakopia,” will be released on Oct. 28 — a Monday, breaking with the music-industry standard Friday release date.
No further information was released except that a box set edition of the album is now available for pre-order, but a two-minute teaser video clip released yesterday suggests that at least the first single from the album, “St. Chroma,” has a dark undertone. It starts with a masked character, apparently Tyler, leading a series of masked people marching through the desert — his hair is in a comical, rabbit-ish do but the black and white video and the song’s whispered, almost unintelligible rapping and music — which ranges from chanted vocals to a warped chorus — have an ominous vibe. Sure enough, the people all march into a long container with the word “Chromakopia” painted onto it — then the video turns to color and a hand is seen setting off a detonator and the container is destroyed in a massive explosion, with all the people inside.
The album will be the first new music from Tyler since the release early last year of the expanded version of his excellent 2021 album “Call Me If You Get Lost” album. He performed at the Austin City Limits festival earlier this month and said that it would probably be the last show he’d play for a while — which the new music makes doubly curious, because his annual Camp Flog festival in Los Angeles is scheduled for a month from now; no lineup has been announced but the festival often reveals its lineup just days before.