Review Summary: Quite literally one of the worst albums to ever exist.
If you're reading this and you care about music as an art form, there is no piece of wisdom I can impart more emphatically than this -
get involved in making music. I won't spend too much time alluding to what I do in my spare time, but I've been attending an open mic in my neighborhood for five years. I typically plug my phone in and sing covers of popular songs that will animate the crowd, with the original instrumentals (often with backing vocals) funneling through the bar's sound system. It's a substitute while I muster the time, and the gumption, to write and perform my own content, but there is plenty of legitimacy in covering songs you enjoy, in trying to put your own spin on a song that inspired you many years ago.
So, if that's your M.O. like it is for me, do it. If you want to just stand there and sing acapella or strum a guitar, do it. If you want to get a full band together, f*cking
do it. Whatever making music looks like for you, get out there and do it. Engage in the art of writing or singing something from the heart, with the friends and communities around you. Simply put, contribute a verse to the powerful play Robin Williams referenced in
Dead Poets Society.
Don't do whatever the f*ck Tyga is doing.
Tyga's newest "album" (if you dare to grant it such high praise)
$tarface was created through extensive use of artificial intelligence. While the California rapper claims he wrote the lyrics and sang them himself, the passages are painfully repetitious and the vocals are waggish, robotic and devoid of any discernible ounce of life or humanity. Such pitfalls are among the most common indicators of, and problems with, AI-generated music. By his own admission, Tyga grew up in a "well-to-do" pocket of the San Fernando Valley and is a multi-millionaire today. He
surely must possess at least a modicum of education and therefore could, should have had the foresight to recognize that proudly touting such concoctions in this moment would generate a lot of controversy. By the same token, claiming that much of the "music" is still organic when it very ostensibly isn't only serves to further exacerbate this unforced public relations calamity.
His defense for the practice is that AI is simply "where technology is going." Many argue these generative bandwidths have already plateaued from a capability standpoint, but that's a whole separate can of worms. I don't deny that AI and modern tech can conceivably be utilized as a helpful tool for artists and songwriters, but this "album" isn't that; this is eschewing creativity in the name of efficiency and somehow still f*cking it up. Congratulations, Tyga, you mentally impoverished Muppet. Ya played yourself.
I don't need, nor wish, to inadvertently dignify these lazy "compositions" with the effort of running through with a fine-toothed comb that I would normally grant to even the most inane songs I come across. One skim through this steaming pile of slop just for baseline posterity is all I could work up, and it's lucky beyond description to even get that. The flaccid beats are a rip off of, not a love-letter to, 80s synth-pop and R&B. The vocals are hopelessly, offensively slothful, indolent, heartless, lacking in any spark whatsoever. Lyrics and themes are repeated often, sometimes within seconds of each other (e.g. "Spinnin' In Circles", "Gave U Racks"). We could have already figured out pretty readily that Tyga is someone who has no business trying to sing, and he picked quite the time to give it a try.
This sh*t is so bad that
Pitchfork handed it their first 0.0 rating in
nineteen f*cking years. Many times when we encounter artists whose intentions are as sinister as their music is putrid, we (understandably) oscillate towards hyperbole when describing it. This is one such time when such a response is totally founded and warranted.
$tarface is an insult to music as an art form. It is as viscerally hurtful to the heart and soul as it is to the ears. I have no problem taking my hyperbole, nay, well-reasoned ire, just a step further and explicitly referring to this as one of the
worst albums of all time.
$tarface by Tyga is cyclospora put to record.
