Fireworks explode, flames burn, smoke engulfs the room and a screech erupts from the audience as a masked Tyler, the Creator emerges from a thick green haze to the gut-rumbling bass of St Chroma. It’s rare to hear such a frenzied response to new songs but it establishes the mood for an evening during which the LA rapper’s most recent work, from 2024’s Chromakopia, is received with the same level of adoration as old favourites. And he runs through the album almost in its entirety.
Performing solo on stage to a backing track, he bounces giddily but gracefully across the vast space. The bass frequently hits outrageously hard throughout the evening, shaking the building’s foundations, such as during the grinding charge of Noid. While effective, the frequent bass drops do sometimes kill some of the detail in the music, as well as perhaps overcompensating for the lack of live instrumentation.
By the midpoint, things get cosy and intimate as an unmasked Tyler, the Creator walks a huge floating catwalk to a stage made to look like a living room. He takes his shoes off and flicks through a box of vinyl before picking out his own LPs and placing them on a turntable. Yonkers and Who Dat Boy absolutely detonate the room, with the latter track spawning huge circle pits in the audience as bodies pinball around inside. This section, while conceptually neat, can feel a little passive at points, with Tyler not always singing fully over the shortened songs, and it coming across more like a DJ set, or as though he is curating a mixtape of his own life’s work in real time.
However, he leans further into performance during the final run. His impassioned, raspy delivery of Thought I Was Dead is remarkably raw and his flow is both fluid and furious. The crowd harmonising on See You Again is genuinely beautiful, and as he winds up with I Hope You Find Your Way Home, he finishes the evening the same way he started it: with new songs being rapturously received like they are already classics.
• Tyler, the Creator is at the O2, London, on 19 May and touring the UK until 31 May
