The "lone" wolf

The album ‘Wolf’ by Tyler The Creator explores the angsty feeling of adolescence—a big piece for the Wolf trilogy and a growth transition for the artist. 

  The music can capture the feeling of a struggling adolescent. It’s Shown as it fights between hypnotic, harmonical, and discordant tones. The lyrics are rough and brutal. Some may say boorish. Even so, the Wolf album wouldn’t be what it is without this. The lyrics give it that emotionally rich feeling, even if they might be aggressive. Lyrics like “I needed to get out of the house, so I hit the dead Sams, we were biking it out/In a black hoodie, with an Arizona and a bag of Skittles/Just to see what all that f··king hype is about.” which is referring to the Trayvon Martin case. He touches on sensitive topics without remorse. Tyler again shows how much he likes to provoke the public with this album. 

The album locks the listener into its world. It swiftly bashes the listener in the face before soothing worries with jazzy tunes, trapping the listener for more. The album digs deeper into the concept of prey and predator that his past albums have been taunting. We can see that the artist points to many issues that he had gone through in his adolescence. The characters Wolf, Dr. TC, Sam, and Salem are alter-egos of Tyler. 

The album revolves around three characters: Wolf, Sam, and Salem. The characters show a significant part of the artist. “The Wolf Haley guy is the guy I want to be. He’s just wild, he,  just f**king crazy,” Tyler stated. While Wolf shows all the aspects Tyler wants to be, Sam is all that he doesn’t. Sam is the opposite. Salem is there to progress the conflict between these two egos further. As the album slowly unfolds, we learn that Sam and Wolf aren't two but one. Dr. TC helped us reveal that it was just a therapy session. The album's lesson becomes clear. We might not be the individuals we desire to be, but we aren't the worst of us either. 

The album does well in creating an immersive world. Even if it might be brutal, it still is an impactful and beautifully constructed album.