【搬运】【译】滚石Rolling Stone评Tyler the Creator 2019年专辑《IGOR》

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

With his 2017 album Flower Boy, Tyler, the Creator set out to answer a simple, burning question: Who dat boy? The result was nothing short of a revelation. Tyler bloomed almost literally, burrowing into his past and emerging from the closet amidst naturalistic motifs and a sun-drenched landscape of woozy synths, piano splashes, and Mancini-esque strings. In the process, he radically re-contextualized his history as a Ritalin-addled provocateur who made songs with titles like “AssMilk,” tweeted under the nom de guerre @fucktyler, and hurled gay slurs with a disturbing regularity. Ultimately, Flower Boy was a triumph because Tyler succeeded in reinventing his sound and ethos without sacrificing his subversive edge.

承接他在2017年发行的上一张专辑《Flower Boy（花少年）》,Tyler, the Creator开始尝试回答一个简单却棘手的问题——我是谁？而结果完全是一个启示。Tyler几乎是完全绽放开来了——在自然主义主题和由令人眼花缭乱的合成器、泼洒般的钢琴声和曼西尼式弦乐组成的浸透着阳光的景致下，挖掘自己的过去，慢慢从柜中走了出来。在这一过程中，他从根本上重新审视了自己：他曾是一个用类似“AssMilk”之类字眼作为自己歌曲的标题、用“fucktyler”作为自己推特网名并以令人惊讶的频率发出着恐同言论、离经叛道者的人。总的来说，《Flower Boy》是一次成功的尝试，因为Tyler在没有牺牲自己具有颠覆性的边缘尝试的情况下成功地重塑了自己的音乐风格和精神气质。

Like Flower Boy, Tyler’s new album IGOR is an album for the summer months. It’s a rich and messy mélange of R&B, funk and rap that carries a luminous sheen and a bittersweet undercurrent; lyrically, Tyler traces the emotional journey of being the odd man out in a love triangle. “Your other one evaporate, we celebrate/You under oath, now pick a side,” he raps on “New Magic Wand.” On IGOR, Tyler seldom acts as the character he plays in the “What’s Good” music video, in which he vigorously shadowboxes while wearing a blonde bowl cut wig and a two-tone pink suit. Much more often he’s wounded and vulnerable, weighed down by real emotional labor.

像《Flower Boy》一样，Tyler的新专辑《IGOR》是一张“夏日限定”专辑。这张专辑承载了一种闪耀着的光泽和苦乐参半的暗流，并混杂了节奏布鲁斯、放克和饶舌等风格，丰富而又混乱；在歌词层面上，Tyler探寻了作为一个在一段三角恋中古怪存在的心路历程。“Your other one evaporate, we celebrate/You under oath, now pick a side（你的另一个已经蒸发了，我们便开始庆祝/你已经宣誓过，现在就得选边站）,”他在“New Magic Wand”中唱道。在《IGOR》中，Tyler保持自己在“What’s Good”MV中的形象并不多见——戴着碗形的金色假发、穿着双色粉红西装夸张地做着太极拳动作。更多时候，他是受到伤害、脆弱并被真实情感劳动的重力所压垮的。

Tyler’s story about navigating his crumbling relationship feels rendered in earnest, but it’s hardly the centerpiece of IGOR. Rather, it exists primarily to serve the album’s zany vocal experiments. Tyler eschews his raspy baritone and operates on a spectrum between an imitation of Pharrell’s squeaky falsetto and pitched-up, droopy-eared Eeyore raps. Instead of constructing songs around catchy hooks and brisk 16-bar verses, he revels in pregnant pauses, stops frequently to repeat lines several times, and generally lets himself falter and stumble blindly across the middle ground of the album’s lush production, which is characterized by thick, buzzsaw bass lines, glittering arpeggiated synths, and juicy neo-soul harmonies. The first moment on Igor that could be described as a “verse” doesn’t arrive until halfway through the second track “Earfquake,” when Playboi Carti seizes the mic and lets his marvelous baby voice fly. (By contrast, Kanye West’s sorry guest turn on “Puppets” sounds like he recorded it by moaning indiscriminately into a tin can.)

Tyler的故事围绕着自己如何处理破碎的人际关系而展开，并散发这一种真实感，不过这应该并不是《IGOR》最主要的核心。相反，它的存在应该更主要是为专辑中滑稽的人声实验服务。Tyler避开了他刺耳的男中音，在模仿Pharrell高音假声和音调高昂、耷拉着耳朵的屹耳饶舌乐之间进行创作。他痴迷于充满意味的停顿之中，时常在某处停下以重复好几遍同样的词，同时让自己慢慢地盲目蹒跚着行进到这张专辑（以如锯齿般厚实的低音线、闪亮的合成器琶音和妙趣横生的新灵魂乐和声为特征的）华丽制作的中间平地上，而不是简单地通过抓耳的副歌旋律和16节轻快的主歌来构造歌曲。直到专辑第二首歌曲“Earfquake”的一半已经过去，Playboi Carti得到了麦克风并开始让自己独具特色的娃娃音展现出来，整张《IGOR》中才第一次出现能被叫做是“主歌”的部分。（相比之下，Kanye West在“PUPPETS”中的助阵就要显得遗憾得多——他像是在对一只易拉罐不加区别地呻吟。）

By couching his vocals deep in the mix, Tyler is basically saying that he sees himself as producer, singer, and rapper, in that order. “Man having random folks walk up to me telling me about the bridge on I THINK gives me so much joy,” Tyler tweeted upon the album’s release. “if u know me i can be annoying with talks about bridges and progressions so im hyped its people who care. the version you hear is the 9th one, kept going back until it was PERFECT.” No matter how obnoxious and pedantic this bridge-talk is, Tyler’s pride in his meticulous production is well-earned. Across IGOR, he achieves a happy balance by tempering his wonky song structures bordering on the surreal and dogged pursuit of synthgasms with a clear narrative arc and careful calculated swerves in tone and texture.

通过在混音中更多地展现自己地声线，Tyler基本上实在表达，他将自己视为不仅是一名制作人、饶舌者，更是一名歌手。“Man having random folks walk up to me telling me about the bridge on I THINK gives me so much joy（忽然有个人走过来告诉我间奏应该怎么写，我觉得这让我太高兴了）,”Tyler在专辑发行之际发推说道，“如果你们足够了解我你们就会知道在处理衔接和专辑的改进上可能会很让人烦，所以我也算是被人们关心着炒作了，现在你听到的版本已经是第九版了，我们不断不断地从头再来就是为了达到完美。”不管这种桥头堡式的谈话多么迂腐和令人讨厌，Tyler对他细致入微的作品感到自豪是当之无愧的。在《IGOR》中，Tyler通过调整自己摇摆不定的歌曲结构，达到了一种愉快的平衡，这种结构近乎超现实主义，对合奏的执着追求，带有清晰的叙事弧线，以及精心设计的色调和纹理转向。

Igor is a heartfelt album that finds Tyler lowering his guard and revealing himself to be a shape-shifting artist who is still growing, and who has fully shed his skin as a vulgar internet cowboy. On the final song, he gingerly poses the question to his former lover, “Are we still friends? Can we be friends?” His singing is amateur, but the production, anchored by a swaying Al Green sample, is massive. It’s not hard to see Tyler closing out his set at any of the festivals he’s headlining this year (Governors Ball, Firefly Festival, and his own Camp Flog Gnaw) by gently rocking back and forth, leading 50 thousand people in that sweet refrain.

《IGOR》是一张真诚的专辑，它让Tyler放低了自己的防备并展示自己作为一个正在成长的艺术家和已经褪去各种肤浅表面的粗俗互联网牛仔男孩的形状可变性。在最后一首歌里，他小心翼翼地对自己曾经的恋人提出了这样一个疑问，“Are we still friends? Can we be friends?（我们还是朋友吗？我们还能成为朋友吗？）”他的演唱技术可能还不够专业，但这扎根于Al Green摇摆不定的采样制作是非常优秀的。我们不难看到，Tyler在他今年的任何一个领衔的音乐节(Governors Ball, Firefly Festival, 还有他自己的Camp Flog Gnaw)上轻轻地前后摇摆，带领五万人唱着那甜美的副歌并以此为这些演出画上完美的句点。