Key Takeaways
- Tyga leaned into his Starface persona on Instagram, quoting a 2008 verse from Kanye West about thriving on hate as he brushed off backlash to his '80s synth-pop album, $TARFACE.
- The move came just after Pitchfork torched the AI-assisted project with a historic 0.0 review — calling it "slop-pop" that made the world worse — and even compared it unfavorably to Lil Wayne’s infamous rock album, Rebirth.
- After initially pitching $TARFACE as "100 percent human-made," Tyga later admitted using AI for elements like '80s synths and a guitar solo, insisting there’s "nothing wrong" with the tech and that Starface is "above it all" despite brutal critic and reader scores.
Tyga has dug deep into the Kanye West archives for a verse to use as ammo against his critics over his latest album, $TARFACE.
On Wednesday (August 12), the former Young Money rapper took to Instagram to post a pic of him dressed up as his 1980s alter-ego, Starface, sat alongside a couple of sports cars. The caption included a nod to Ye's guest verse on DJ Felli Fel's 2008 cut, "Finer Things."
"I'm Inspired When People Don't Like Me. They Keep Me Writing So Exciting. The Drama Is so enticing. Might Just Bite a muthafucka Like Tyson," Tyga wrote.
The post comes after Pitchfork awarded the rapper's '80s synth-inspired album a 0.0 rating, its first such rating since Jet's Shine On in 2006, ending a 20-year stretch without the publication's most damning score. Readers weren't kind either: the site's user score is 1.3 out of 10 as of time of writing.
Reviewer Drew Millard opened by invoking Lil Wayne's heavily criticized 2010 album, Rebirth, as a benchmark, then argued $TARFACE cleared the bar in the wrong direction. "While I shudder to think what Rebirth would have sounded like in the age of prompt-based pop," Millard wrote, "I can all but guarantee you it would be better than this piece of shit."
His reasoning: Rebirth, for all its chaos, contained something unmistakably Wayne. Pitchfork's review put the broader indictment plainly: "The rapper's slop-pop concept album is smug and complacent and depressing. Its very existence has made the world a worse place."
After the review was published, Millard took to X to thank Pitchfork for "letting [him] write their first 0.0 review in 20 years," adding that Tyga "really earned it."
The mockery arrived against a backdrop of Tyga's own shifting story about the album. He implied to People that it was "100 percent human-made," citing period-accurate gear: "delays, harmonizers... everything that we used was stuff that they used in the '80s."
However, a week later, he gave VIBE the full picture. "We definitely used AI as a tool," he said. "And I know people are going to be mad about me saying this, but it's where technology is going. It's no different than when Auto-Tune came out."
Regardless, Tyga seemed unbothered, telling VIBE that after "15 years of hits," he was unconcerned with critics. His alter-ego, he explained, operated on different terms. "$tarface could do whatever the fuck he wants to do. He's on his own wave. He's above it all," he said.
