With Wolf, Tyler, the Creator displays a radical growth as a producer, composer and arranger, even if, as a rapper, he’s still up to some of the same antics. Still, the album contains a few of the best songs he’s ever written. “48” is a wonder, “Answer” and “Lone” delve into deeply personal matters with poise, and “Rusty” is one of the most arresting lyrical performances on the record if you can see past the self-serving chest-beating. It’s a big screen rendering of the Neptunes-meet-Stevie-Wonder-in-a-microwave quality of Tyler’s earlier works, the sound of a creative mind coming into the possession of the proper means to carry out its ideas. At its best, Wolf manages to make the inroads toward accessibility that Goblin wouldn’t and pulls it off without sacrificing too much of Tyler’s refreshing capriciousness. When the album isn’t busy telling us that we ought to like it more, it’s delivering reasons why we actually should.
- Craig Jenkins