From surprise listening events to special edition vinyl, Tyler The Creator is showing how it should be done with his ‘Chromakopia’ rollout.
Earlier this week, I wrote about Tyler The Creator’s new album Chromakopia potentially bring back Tuesday album releases, but as it turns out, the entire rollout has been an extended exercise in how artists can benefit from putting fans first. Since announcing the unusual release date, he also announced a listening event at Intuit Dome in Inglewood for $5, where he would play the album and “perform.”
When you think about it, it’s hilarious that Tyler The Creator, who was seemingly so antisocial at the outset of his career, has become a paragon of “fans-first” thinking in hip-hop. After all, this was the destructive dynamo that told us, “Kill people, burn sh*t, f*ck school” along with his merry band of misfit troublemakers, Odd Future.
But that was where the unbreakable bond between Tyler and his fans first started. They related to his mischievous brand of anti-establishment mayhem because they recognized — instinctively, if not intellectually — that it came from Tyler’s own fandom. The Hawthorne native was as much one of the kids who tuned into everything his favorite artists did as he now is the artist fans tune into.
While older hip-hop heads might not have understood this, Tyler’s rage against the machine came from a place of genuine love for the art of hip-hop, and a frustration with the way corporations have stripped it of its adventurous, rebellious spirit in favor of cashing in on formulas and algorithms designed to make the most money.
