Tyga is the guy in your group of friends who no one particularly likes but is always just kind of there. He spent the past year burning what few bridges he had left—most memorably, in a depressing triangle between himself, ex-girlfriend Blac Chyna, and labelmate Drake—and decorating his Egypt-themed clothing store like an Illuminati VFW hall. His pet Siberian tiger was confiscated by California wildlife authorities. He's currently dating 17-year old Kylie Jenner; it's a creepy and presumably illegal mess that doesn't seem to bother her bro-in-law Kanye West, the executive producer of Tyga's fourth album. The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty should've been the biggest look of T-Raww's career; instead, it's the casualty of YMCMB's implosion that no one was especially concerned about. He threatened to leak it last fall, claiming his best work was being held hostage: crickets. You can just imagine him texting Kylie when The Gold Album debuted, at long last, on Spotify last week: "Can you remind your sisters to tweet the link to my album? ;)"
To be fair, the guy's had his share of moments. "Rack City" was the spark that ignited DJ Mustard's career; last summer's Young Thug-featuring "Hookah" was even better. He had semi-meaningful contributions to "Bedrock" and "Loyal", two very good, very dumb songs. And if you succumb to the darkness early on—letting it wash over you, baptizing you in its filth—his recent joint album with Chris Brown (Fan of a Fan) is actually pretty solid. It's exactly what you expect: a totally pleasant collection of Nic Nac beats, soaring hooks, and salty, chauvinist lyrics about how they're going to steal your girl and not even enjoy it, just to spite you. These songs succeed for reasons that have almost nothing to do with Tyga, but knowing when to show up is a talent in itself, and if there's one thing Tyga is great at, it's showing up.
As Tyga would tell it, The Gold Album is his "serious" album, the one where he stops being polite and starts getting real. If you preordered the album back in January, you got an early download of the two lead singles: passable Drake impression "Make It Work", and the Kanye and Mike Dean-produced "40 Mill". The latter came with a self-directed video, in which T-Raww goes straight M. Night Strugglerap, becomes infected by church-dwelling demons, and ultimately tosses a single rose into his own open casket. (There's also an inexplicable subplot about fitness.) Both of these songs are decent enough; neither of these songs appear on The Gold Album. Nor does "Hookah", or the enjoyable single with Justin Bieber, "Wait for a Minute", that's now almost two years old.
Instead, we have 12 microwave-nuked approximations of Drake songs circa 2013 and Kanye songs spanning from The College Dropout to Yeezus, with none of the wit, soul, or edge. At best, you can slip into a meditative zone wherein Tyga's tissue-thin voice fades into its surroundings, as on "Wham". But then you hear Tyga deliver a line like "Hole in her neck from the fangs/ Pressure and pain" with all the force of a clammy, limp handshake, and reality sets in. Tyga couldn't string two coherent lines together to save his life: each bar is a dead end, completely unrelated to the one that came before it. He is the converse of Big Sean—another guy who knows how to milk a Kanye co-sign for all it's worth—who raps like he is scrolling down an especially long iPhone note. Tyga raps like his bars are transcribed on the insides of fortune cookies that he must break open individually.
Tyga doesn't even sound like he's having fun here; the prevailing mood is one of vague bitterness, directed at everyone, but particularly women. "Poppa ran a hedge fund/ All his daughter do is give head," he raps on "Shaka Zulu", a blatant "Started from the Bottom" rip-off. On "Muh Fucka", T-Raww threatens to fuck your mom moments after he muses about how no woman will ever match his mother's love—one of the album's several instances of, shall we say, complicated family sexual dynamics. "Pleazer", the desperate, last-ditch single, sucks all the fun from its "Freaky Tales" sample so Tyga can detail how he's "bout to catch a felony" for a young woman whose interests include dick and, uh, dick. It seems possible featured guest Boosie might save the proceedings until he references "Kardashian pussy" and sends the whole thing spiraling down in flames. "Hard for You" is the token ballad; it's about exactly what you think it's about, and just to make things extra uncomfortable, Kylie has reported it's her fave. Yay!
I wish there was anything on The Gold Album that matched the batshit, DGAF audacity of Tyga's creepy storefront or zoologically unreasonable videos: All-seeing eyes of Horus, pussies in sarcophagi, blood orgies in the Agape Lodge with L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons. The closest we've got to any of that is a deeply unsettling moment near the end of cheap 808s & Heartbreak simulacrum "Down for a Min", where Tyga's kitten-like mewls are interrupted by what seems to be Siri's dark, DMT-smoking twin. "Listen to the sound of my voice," she commands. "Darkness will always follow the brightest star." I'm not sure if it's intended to be motivational, or an attempt at subliminal Illuminati mind control—I'm too preoccupied by how similar the stilted, awkward patterns of her robotic delivery are to Tyga's own voice.
