It’s been fascinating to watch the progression of Tyler, the Creator over the past 10 years. From Goblin to Cherry Bomb to IGOR (and everything in between) he’s evolved his sound and sharpened his skillset in each era. Tyler is a world-builder who approaches each album rollout as a unit, stitching together intricate storylines across music videos, artwork, lyrics, interviews, and the songs themselves. And every time he releases a new project, he delivers it with a new aesthetic, rarely repeating what he’s done in the past.
What will the next chapter in Tyler’s career arc bring us? It looks like we’ll soon find out. This week, he announced that his forthcoming album, Call Me If You Get Lost, is right around the corner. He hasn’t done any interviews about this new era yet, but he has left plenty of breadcrumbs, if you pay close attention. As we wait for the new album to arrive, we collected some of these clues for you. Here are 11 things you need to know about Tyler, the Creator’s next album.
It’s called ‘Call Me If You Get Lost' and it's dropping on June 25
You can hear snippets on your phone
The first single is “Lumberjack”
Expect a lot of rap (Tyler likes rapping again)
There is speculation it could be a ‘Gangsta Grillz’ project
He references classic rap visuals
On the album cover of IGOR, Tyler proudly wrote that “all songs [were] written, produced, and arranged” by himself. A week later, he made history as the first solo rapper to ever earn a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for an entirely self-produced and arranged album. Now, it seems he’s taking the same approach on Call Me If You Get Lost, because the cover artwork includes the following line in small print: “The holder of this license wrote, composed, and arranged all songs within the attached record, unless stated otherwise.”
After Tyler officially announced the album, fans started poking around his social media accounts for clues and they noticed his Instagram captions look a lot like a tracklist. As early as November 2019, Tyler has been captioning photos with a number followed by what could be a song title. Some of the captions also contain parentheticals with names of possible collaborators, as well as photos of Tyler with musician friends. On February 26, 2020, Tyler captioned of photo of himself with a cow: “3. 3 Kings” (Hov only version) which could suggest a Jay-Z collaboration. In April 2020, he captioned a selfie: “2. No Vacancy (gunn) – mustache,” which could be alluding to a collab with the Griselda member. There are also solo captions, like, “5. cleva” Tyler has not confirmed the tracklist yet, but don’t be surprised if some of these song titles pop up on the official album.
There’s merch
There are hints it could be another character-driven concept album
Last but definitely not least, we have an important finding from our good friends over at the P&P Stats & Research Department. As they have discovered, Tyler always releases studio albums within 100 days of a Fast & Furious movie. Don’t believe them? Look at the stats yourself. Goblin? 11 days after Fast Five. Cherry Bomb? 10 days before Fast & Furious 7. Flower Boy? You guessed it! 98 days after The Fate of the Furious. The list goes on and on. And now, Tyler will be releasing Call Me If You Get Lost on the exact same day (!!!) that the latest installment in the blockbuster franchise (F9) hits theaters. Mindblowing. For more groundbreaking findings (like an original study about how many beats Kanye made when he cooked up 5 beats a day for 3 summers) we encourage you to follow @pnpstatsresearch on Instagram. Aslo, Pigeons & Planes, it’s time to finally fund the research lab! These guys are doing great work.