Dissect - S10E12 - Season Finale: IGOR by Tyler, The Creator

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

We conclude our season-long analysis of IGOR by exploring the implications of the album's musical and thematic loop. We also dissect IGOR's cover art and influences before hearing from Dissect listeners around the world sharing their biggest takeaways from the album and season. Shop Season 10 merchandise here. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Join Dissect Discord here. Host, EP, Writer: Cole Cuchna Writer: Camden Ostrander Audio Editor: Kevin Pooler Theme Music: Birocratic Recreations: Andrew Atwood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is the finale episode of our season-long examination of Tyler the creator's Igor. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. On our last episode, we dissected Igor's final track, Are We Still Friends? It was there that Tyler communicated his fear of the guy being totally absent from his life after the two broke it off romantically. And so Tyler suggested being friends, a request that sounded more like a plea by the song's end. But like its title suggests, are we still friends, ultimately? is left as a question. We actually never find out if Tyler and the guy remained friends.

In this way, the album itself is left narratively unresolved, a quality that is also reflected musically in the album's final moments, where Igor's distorted synthesizer plays a single, deflated note that does not resolve the song harmonically. In our last episode, we talked about how this unresolved ending of the album was a perfect match for Tyler's emotional state, capturing the mixed, bittersweet emotions of separating from someone he once loved, and his honest human desire to salvage something from the relationship, even if that just means friends or acquaintances. But at the very end of the episode, we also revealed how the final unresolved note of Are We Still Friends is actually resolved if you

start the album over, as the first note of Igor's theme played on the same distorted synth, implies an authentic cadence, a move from the dominant to taunting. This sequencing of the album suggests a musical loop, which also seems to clearly reflect the album's narrative. Because if Tyler remains friends with the guy, there's the very real risk that he'll once again fall in love with him, starting the whole narrative cycle over. He'll become infatuated but fearful of abandonment like we heard on Earthquake and I think. He will once again run into the guy's insecurities about his own sexuality as revealed on running out of time. He'll grow desperate to win the guy over to the point of imagining a murder scene as depicted on New Magic Wand. He'll come to realize that the guy has

total emotional control of his life and actions as described on a boy as a gun and puppet. He'll then have to make the uphill emotional battle to regain his autonomy as we heard on what's good, attempt to find peace with breaking things off like we experienced in Gong John Thank You, and say goodbye to his love as he did on I Don't Love You anymore. Finally, he'll have to contend with the urge to salvage some part of the relationship by becoming friends, which of course comes with the risk of resurfacing those romantic feelings and starting the whole cycle over. In this way, the musical and narrative loop of Igor perfectly reflects the very first thing we heard Gerard Carmichael say on the album.

Exactly what you run from, you end up chasing. Turns out Tyler was revealing the structure of the album from its start, establishing this relentless loop of run turn chase, chase turn run. Thus we come to realize that the end of Igor presents us with two possible endings. Playing the album start to finish leaves it unresolved, therefore reflecting Tyler deciding not to be friends and the bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye for good. Playing the album from start to finish and immediately starting it over resolves the album, creating a self-contained loop,

reflecting Tyler deciding to be friends and entrapping him in an endless cycle of running and chasing, forever the subservient, grotesque sidekick, forever Igor. The dual endings presented on the album are a microcosm of how many potential paths our lives can take, and the way the decisions we make can dramatically change the trajectory of the single path we do end up taking. Part of the beauty and tragedy of living just one life is that we'll never truly know how a single decision might impact our journey. Perhaps Tyler is better off making a clean break, leaving the relationship unresolved without a friendship, or perhaps becoming friends would eventually lead to better timing in the relationship

where long-term romance was finally possible. Unfortunately, there's no way to really know. Sometimes we drive in circles, other times we progress. We're all out here trying our best, making the best decisions we can, and hoping the ones we do make ultimately create a life we're content with. Now, shortly after Igor was released in May of 2019, I actually tweeted at Tyler detailing my looping theory, a tweet that included the music theory of the album's last note

being resolved by its first note. And Tyler liked the tweet, which in my mind confirms the basis of the theory. More evidence comes by way of something Tyler said in his Apple music interview, where he describes the creative explosion that birthed the album's raw ingredients. Also, Igor was definitely like all feeling.

Woke up in the morning, just how I felt, made that song, did that for like two weeks. And then I was like, oh, shit, I have something. It was like six songs, six seven songs. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is. And that's kind of why it goes into this weird chronological order because that was how I felt that morning.

It was like over a span of like two weeks almost. And then every time I make an album, I put it in a playlist of my phone just to see how it flows and stuff. And I was like, oh, shit, this, this flows. And I was subconscious, like, I didn't even notice I was drawing a sense. circle. It was just all filling. Given what we know about the looping aspect of the album, it seems no coincidence that Tyler here said circle to describe what he made with Igor.

But equally revelatory is the fact that just waking up and expressing what he was feeling is what led him to subconsciously create this circle. This reveals the magic of honesty and art. The raw expression of emotion puts paint on the canvas, and the skill, practice, and patience of the artist refines the raw expression into something eternal, something that memorializes human experience and feeling. And it's often through art, be it to creation or the consumption, that we articulate, process, and or endure our most difficult emotions, a safe space in which to explore our most vulnerable, confusing, frustrating experiences so that we may free ourselves from them and hopefully grow as a result of our endurance. The beauty of Tyler being so honest in his

communication of feeling is that it makes his specific situation feel universal, because while most of us likely haven't been in a love triangle exactly like the one documented on Igor, we've all been in love, we've all been infatuated, we've all been rejected, felt inadequate, felt like we lost ourselves, felt paralyzed by fear and indecisiveness. This is why music exists, why art exists, to make the specific universal, to disintegrate perceived barriers between us to reveal our underlying connection, the fact that we're feeling creatures first, and that so much of this life is learning what to do with what we feel. With Igor, Tyler commemorated his feelings and art. He made something true, something beautiful, and now it's something we can share forever.

I'm happy that I could put something out like this in the climate right now and people are responsive to it in a positive way. And I love it. I absolutely adore this album. When people are like, hey, what do you do? I will give them this first. If I couldn't just say, hey, I make stuff. They're like, no, I need specifics. I would give them this. Now, as we close out our analysis of Igor, we have to acknowledge some of the ancillary material and concepts attached to the album. While we've already talked at length about the Igor character Tyler embodied for this album era, we haven't so much addressed the album's cover art, a sharp-edged, black and white portrait of the flat-top Igor character against

a soft pink background. Tyler's or Igor's face is the central focus, and in this way marks this project as an expression of self, as he puts himself front and center. vulnerable and bold all at once. Of course, Tyler's expression is unknowable and therefore presents a mystery. Who exactly is this Igor character? We recognize Tyler and him, but we also see jagged edges in high contrast darkness that scare, excite, and draw us in. This is one of the more common attributes of an album cover that focuses on a face.

We want to know the story. It taps into an intrinsic part of our brain chemistry, our reaction to human faces. We're inherently drawn to one another, and using the human, and face for a cover allows an artist to create a connection, highlight a mask, form and impression, and express themselves all at once. What are we searching for in the music? What are we looking for in the sound, if not one another? Just as Igor looked for his crush, we look for Tyler, and through the experience of the art, we find him, and in turn find more of ourselves. Now given Tyler's very vocal and passionate admiration for his musical heroes,

we have to at least consider a few potential reference points for Igor's album art. Tyler's facial expression and photocrop matches the cover of Erica Badu's Mama's Gun, one of Tyler's favorite albums of all time. There's also the band Tyler named as an influence for Igor, Tubeway Army, and their self-titled 1979 album, which features a minimalistic, sharp-edged, cropped face against a solid background. Many have also compared Tyler's flat top to Grace Jones, a singer, model, and actress whose androgynous look feels in line with Igor's

Androgyny. However, there's one project cover that isn't talked so much about as a possible prototype for Igor's cover, and that's Tyler's own early mixtape from 2007, when he was 16 and still going by the alias Ace the creator. Named stereotype, this project was set to be released via his MySpace page, and the cover featured an Andy Warhol-inspired pop art quadrant of Tyler's face, roughly edited with the new magic wand tool, teeth showing, staring straight into the camera, a near identical composition to Igor's cover. Unfortunately, it seems that when a high school teacher told Tyler's

mom about his music, her reaction to it discouraged him and he ended up canning the project. As he wrote on the odd future blog at the time, quote, I sent a text message to almost everyone I know. I don't even know if I want to do this music shit anymore. Man, I think I want to do the doom thing, like when I rap, have a mask, or change my voice or something. Because people know I don't get embarrassed, I can act a fool in public, but when it comes to my sounds and literature, I'm always like, no, don't play. Man, this stereotype shit isn't going to drop. I'm over it, unquote.

A teenager when he wrote these words, Tyler said, quote, When it comes to me, sounds and literature, don't play, and voice that he wanted to do the Doom thing. And it's here that we come to what might be the greatest artistic sibling of Igor's art, the cover of the classic 2004 album Mad Villany by MF Doom and Mad Lift.

Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster. That'll be the hour they're, The covers for both Igor and mad villainy feature a tightly cropped black and white face, centering the character of their portraying. Both covers contrasts this black and white face against a singular bright color. Igor's pink and mad villain's orange square. We might chalk these connections up to coincidence if it weren't for Tyler's well-documented love and admiration for Doom,

some of which we've already discussed this season. Back in 2012, Tyler tweeted, quote, I want to meet Doom. Just tell him in person, Operation Lifesaver and Great Day are very epic, and then leave, unquote. Tyler would actually meet Doom less than a year later, inspiring him to tweet, quote, Doom called me T-Buggy on stage, and then he played one beer and looked at me.

He did ho-cakes. Fucking Doom. Wow, unquote. The sort of language makes clear Tyler's fandom, in line with his great passion for the music and artists he loves. Tyler possibly making an homage to Mad Villan's iconic cover, stamps Igor with a level of quality, a statement of esteem, as if Tyler is saying,

look everyone, here's a classic. Oh, and there's one more Tyler tweet that cements the connection. The day after the album released, Tyler said, quote, all caps when he spell the man's name, Igor, unquote. This of course references the most iconic line for mad villainy. M.F. Doom, raps foremost super villainy, intimidatingly tells us to remember to type his name in all caps, a sign of the power and stature his character wields,

and Tyler has made it clear. Igor operates in the same realm. Beyond the possible reference points, Igor's cover perfectly presents Tyler's character. The beautiful pink background contrasts with the uglier black and white, an aesthetic match to the album's central sonic and thematic motif of juxtaposing the beautiful with the ugly. The colors also evoke a contrast of gender, the traditionally feminine pink against the stoic and binary black and white. The crude New Magic Wand Photoshop look references the track of the same name while highlighting the fact that Tyler has taken himself out of a picture, and now his visage exists in the pink. There are also two text sections.

The first is a bit hidden, but if you look closely at Tyler's shoulder, you can see Igor in its unique font in a slightly different tone of black against his black suit. The font is notable for its use of arrows, all the letters appearing bold and suggesting movement, a central motif of the album. And then below Tyler, a typewriter font reads, all songs written, produced, and arranged by Tyler Accoma. Tyler actually talked about why he includes this on his album covers in conversation with Zane Lowe.

I saw a comment, no one cares that you produced and arranged it, Tyler, but me letting people know that will allow different doors to open that's not me just doing voiceovers or a verse. Me being adamant about having that on the cover when I'm designing it is letting people know, hey, let me make the score for your movie or let me do this and that.

And in 20 years, like, that detail will pay off. I put that on the Flower Boy, the other cover too. And I'm going to just try to keep... I wish I did that since day one. Evidence of the meticulousness of his designs, Tyler here shows that he's constantly thinking of the long game of 20 years from now. when Igor is simply another milestone on his life's journey.

People don't realize, like, we got famous off our first dumb-ass ideas before perfecting shit. I say that, like, it's beautiful that, for me, at least, it's been just this, like, album six, oh, I just got my number one. What drives me is getting an idea executed. And every time I have an idea, it shoots for that. It's not about having the, I don't give a fuck about Spotify playlist. I don't go fuck about Apple Playlists.

I don't go fuck about none of that shit. I fucking spend so much time on this shit. Yeah. And whether or not people like it, whatever the fuck, I just want the idea executed. And when that happens and it goes number one, bro, that shit means a lot. And again, I don't make shit to beat first week or beat radio or whatever.

But for this work of art and that album cover in these videos and me doing this suit wig thing, beat, and this is no disrespect to the thing, this is no disrespect to Calder or anyone, but this nigga had every person in the industry. Everyone on that fucking album. Everyone. Everyone.

Cardi B, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Post Malone, Beyonce, J. Everyone who sells billions of records and the fact that I beat him with this that isn't parallel to all the popping music right now was fucking crazy, bro. Are you serious? Like, that was insane to me.

And it's new to me, bro. I'm on album 5 and 6. And it's work. It's effort. It's work. This is fucking, whether it's like it or not, bro, it's so much work in detail put into this shit. I'm hyped.

P-Fa-B-B-B-Bah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was happy. Yay, I talked to you. Like, I'm talking to these people that I love who are proud of me. And I hung up and I'm like, all right, sick. This week's cool. But that don't mean shit. That little number one is babysat.

hell shit in the grand skin. Like, all right, back to work. This consistent focus on forward momentum is something embedded in Tyler's art. Be it finding your wings of cherry bomb, the blossoming growth of Flower Boy, the running motif of Igor, or the traveling boat of Call Me if you get lost. It's clear that Tyler feels life is better in motion. When the pursuit of experience results in personal growth. When one lives life in a constant state of becoming.

When, as Tyler put it, we don't freeze to death. don't get stuck to a past version of ourselves or even held back by people around us who might not understand where we're going. In a recent conversation with the staff at Converse, Tyler answered a question about dealing with these kinds of people and consistent with this motion-based life philosophy advised that they just keep moving.

I didn't realize I was yelling in my early music until one day I was like, oh, I keep yelling when I rap. People probably told me all the time, but it didn't click until it clicked. So at some point, you can't be like wasting your time trying to keep proving someone because maybe they're not in a place where it could go like this. And then that's going to slow you down.

Like, you got to just keep moving. While a somewhat straightforward answer, we recognize Tyler's growing wisdom in this response. To answer a question about other people, Tyler first drew on his own experience about himself, recalling his own inability to recognize something about his music that might have been obvious to others. He then used that personal experience to offer both empathy for those who can't understand your personal path in a particular moment, while also advising that despite that empathy,

you can't let those people hold you back, that you have to keep moving forward. And we can see how this kind of wisdom is ultimately on display in the story of Igor. Tyler's life path aligned with a guy who hadn't yet accepted a part of their sexuality required for their relationship to thrive. While this caused Tyler much frustration and ultimately heartache, a song like Gone Gone Thank You shows Tyler coming to turns with the way things played out, knowing that each of us are traveling our own path at our own pace. I'm not bitter on nothing. I understand that everybody making a choice according to plan that we had two different blueprints but understood affluent.

You opened up early on. I thought I had a permit. We started building the bridge and turned it into a fence that my building got torn down Oh, because of your new tenant, I'll just brib some new shit. Never down with a lease. You never lived in your truth. I'm just happy I lived in it. But I finally found peace. So peace.

Like we touched on throughout this season, Tyler was likely able to reach this place of understanding because of his personal experience with the difficulty of coming to turns with his own sexuality. Much of this experience was documented on Flower Boy, the subject of season four of this podcast, where a lonely Tyler confronts his sexual insecurities, and by the album's end, is finally able to tell a guy that he likes him.

When we recognize the longer character arc presented on Tyler's albums, when we understand the full context of his cumulative journey, we come to appreciate the silver lining in Igor's tragic love story, that despite the despair and desperation the relationship caused him, the growth of Flower Boy allowed Tyler to finally live. live in his truth, which then allowed him to experience love for the first time, allowed him the opportunity to grapple with the intensity of love's power. And so there's beauty in the fact that Tyler had his heartbroken on Igor, because he was

actually in the position to have it broken rather than still confined inside the suffocating walls of his garden shed. He got to experience the earthquake that is love, all of its highs and lows, the full bouquet of emotions only love can inspire. And the gift of this experience undoubtedly led Tyler to more growth, more truth, which in turn led him to more experience, revealing the cumulative, self-sustaining benefits of a life lived in constant motion. Flower Boy, it was like, okay, don't be the crazy funny, like every beat, every part don't have to have a switch up or you don't have to say something edgy, like, shut the fuck up and just say it nice. Don't yell on the record like the first four fucking albums.

So that was like challenging because it's the comfort level of what you're used to doing, like your knee-jerk reaction. And me saying, wait, no. Actually, someone else should sing that. Or let me say this like this. Like, do Flower Boy writing verses, I will write the same verse in four different ways. Because I was going to approach it differently because I was like, I would usually say it like this.

But I was like, okay, that's one part. But let me say it. Let me say it like this when they get it. Ah, that might not work. let me say it with the toe, and because of that, I learned new ways to rap and flow and it helped out, but

not doing my normal comfort thing was like, we got to break out of it even more, and it worked out. So, sometimes getting out your comfort level is the greatest thing ever. And we, we,

it's so easy to fall right back into it. It's easy to relapse, right back in it. Once again, we hear Tyler, use personal experience to communicate a larger idea, promoting individual growth by breaking out of your comfort zone, by not getting stuck, by not freezing to death. This idea always comes back in Tyler's art and conversation because it's so much of who he is.

It's his superpower. It's why despite Igor's multiple endings, we know Tyler isn't going to be caught in that constricting loop for long, if at all, because Tyler's discography is best experienced like his life philosophy, moving forward from one to the next with the understanding that the celebration of life an experience that is call me if you get lost, doesn't come without the heartbreak of Igor, the productive struggle of Flower Boy, the messy transitory puberty of Cherry Bomb, and the promising yet unripe character of his early projects. There's an ascending arc to his catalog,

a continual refinement, which is itself an artistic embodiment of Tyler's unending pursuit of truth and authenticity and maturating experience. Indeed, the beauty of Tyler's discography is that it's a large-scale representation of perhaps his greatest gift, the simultaneous ability to stay true to himself, to know exactly who he is, while never being afraid to grow, to shed old skin, to transcend an earlier version of himself, or as Tyler learned from his father figure, Farrell, the art of getting older without getting old. I love that, man. That man's my damn father. That's where it's at. I love him. And it's deeper than just being a fan of his music.

I mean, just on a behind-the-scenes level, he's opened the doors for me in so many ways. I am forever in debt to that man. Like, for real. For real. Can you think of one really cool bit of advice or one thing he said to you that really stuck? Because I know you collect that stuff. He just said it's a difference between getting old and getting older.

Getting older is just wiser and being more aware and things. But some things get old. Some people just try to rock him is still out here and do rags and Peli Peli-Peli Jackets being stuck at a time and getting old. and, you know, he just told me to just never get old, stay getting older. As we've observed throughout this season, Tyler constantly credits his creative heroes for so much of who he is. A natural weirdo, Tyler and his youth found a safe space in the creations of his artistic forebears. And in a remarkable story of full circle's universal reciprocity, Tyler is now one of them.

Without that support and reciprocity, there is no Tyler the creator. There is no Igor. Because ultimately the story of Igor, the weirdo sidekick, the grotesque stepchild, is the story of Tyler Oconma, the artist forever on the outskirts and thriving. My whole life I felt like a stepchild in school, at home, and especially in music and rap where I have a profession. And like seventh grade, I got in a fight with some guy because he said, you don't belong on the basketball court. Which he was right, I'm trash. Eighth grade, I tried out for drama club. I got in and got kicked out within an hour

because she said I was too hyper. I was standing on chairs, definitely, but I still think that I should have stayed in there. Ninth grade, they wouldn't let me join band class because I couldn't read music, but I still had the passion, and I'm on two instruments now picking up a third. But when all that happened, I said, fuck them.

I didn't let none of that shit stop me from doing anything that I wanted to do. And that's because the people that I think are innovators was the people I looked up to, like the Farrells, the Cognhys, the Hype Williams, the Dave Chappelle's, the Erica Badoos, the Andre 3,000s. And while I don't think I'm an innovator, but they are, I know it's a common thread between us. And I feel like we're all free and we create from this honest place, this really honest space where we don't give a fuck where no one says. And because of that, that's why I always felt like a stepchild.

But Wall Street Journal finally made it feel like that family celebrated my birthday. So thank you. Now, to bring this season to a close, we're going to transition into what is always my favorite part of every season, and that's hearing from you dissect listeners, sharing your biggest takeaways from the album. But before we get to those, I'd like to take a moment to share mine. Obviously, there's so much to admire about Igor that it's difficult to choose just one aspect of the album. I admire Tyler's continual growth as a musician and producer and the meticulous

compositional details littered throughout the project. I admire the fact that Tyler can make an album that deals with sexuality, but that those aspects of the story didn't have to dominate the narrative, that Igor was allowed to be at its heart a love story like any other. But most of all, the thing I always come back to thinking about with Igor is my admiration for Tyler's album-long synthesis of the beautiful and the ugly. As we discussed throughout this season, this dichotomy of beautiful and ugly permeates the music and themes of the album. From the harsh, distorted Igor bass mixed with the lush, gorgeous piano chords and vocal harmonies to the at-once vulnerable and grotesque Igor character.

For Tyler, this synthesis is something he's been working on since the very beginning. It's all feeling. It's just what my ear gravitates to. And it's either always, since day one, I've always wanted to make the prettiest shit that's borderline boring or the hardest fucking shit. And I've been trying to mix those together since my first album, literally. the hardest shit and the prettiest shit. Tyler's successful blend of the

Beautiful and the Ugly on Igor represents the execution of a career-long idea and goal, the assimilation of his wide range of unpredictable influences from 90s R&B, punk, neo-soul, rap, and 80s UK alt-pop. At the same time, both the juxtaposition and

the fusion of the beautiful and the ugly transcends Tyler himself into the realm of universal truth. On Igor, it comes to accurately represent the polarizing effects of love. the biggest high-risk, high-reward endeavor experience of our lives. Love brings us our most beautiful moments, but only because it also brings us our most devastating. One exists only because of the existence of the other, and this fluid interdependence is the beautiful, ugly truth of who we are.

Indeed, while it's intuitive to process opposing forces as dichotomous, and either-or, Igor's fluid assimilation of the beautiful and ugly stands to represent the simultaneity of forces within each of us, existing synchronously, because sometimes we're boastfully confident, sometimes we're desperately insecure, sometimes we're understanding and empathetic, sometimes we're vengeful and petty, sometimes we dance, sometimes we fall apart. We're all beautiful, we're all ugly, all at once. Igor is all of us. I'm Nor from Torrance, California.

Igor, to me, is a master class in fluidity, whether conceptually, from one state of mind to another, one person to the next, or from land to sea. Technically, like in the seamless transitions from Igor's theme to earthquake to I think, and in the way that each track's movement creates the continuous flow state we experience narratively. Igor came out during my senior year of high school when I embarked on my biggest life transition yet. Now I'm graduating college, and I feel as though my love and understanding for this album grew as I was able to grow up alongside it. So thank you, thank you, Tyler. Hey Cole, this is Harry from Brisbane.

When I first started listening to Eagle, I was falling in love with someone. And although the album doesn't depict the happiest of love stories, I found an incredible piece of art that will always be the soundtrack of a very special time in my life. Flash forward to today, life takes its course, and sadly, I'm no longer with that person. I found your commentary on life and relationships truly comforting and beautiful. Listening to you and Eagle reminds me that whatever happens in the future, I'll always be thankful for the love I had. Thank you, Tyler, and cheers for the great season call.

I'm Lindsay from D.C., and what struck me most about Igor was how well it portrays the constant running, pushing, pulling, and chasing that happens when you're trying to force love with someone who won't meet you halfway. The image that kept coming to my mind was being stuck in a whirlpool. You're always moving, but rather than moving forward, you're going in a never-ending circle that just sucks you in further. And then when Cole pointed out that the entire album is itself a circle, That was the cherry bomb on top.

The hard truth is that it's not until we stop moving, sit still, and let the grief move through us that we can finally free ourselves from eventual drowning. Hi, I'm James. I'm from Malta. Igor, for me, talks about the natural progression of life and losing loved ones to situations that are out of your control. I feel that life is cyclical. You wake up and you go to sleep every day.

The same way people come into your life and leave. But the only difference is that with love, sometimes it can wake you up without needing to go to sleep the next day. The helplessness of being in a one-sided relationship can make you do things that you otherwise wouldn't. So the best thing to do is let them go. Thank you. Hi, I'm Carlos Agha from Mexico City. For me, a good artwork can be achieved when all of its elements work in the same purpose or talk the same language. In Igor, Tyler shines a producer because he's able to do this both musically and thematically, making seemingly opposite concepts the beautiful and the ugly, work together to transform his personal experience into a touching brutally on his work.

I also want to thank you, Cole, because this season has helped me a hard time. I've been going through a hard time, and the podcast has helped me parse a lot of feelings and put a lot of things in perspective. So keep up the good work and thank you. Hi, this is Ryan from Ontario, Canada. This season being about Igor, came at a great time as I had just gotten back into a Tyler the Creator phase when the first episode came out. This album is one of my favorites, and it is special to me since it was the first Tyler the Creator album I ever listened to. What makes Igor really stand out to me is the production, the way that Tyler can take you through so many different emotions, even without lyrics. I especially like how the final track and the first track blend together, showing the cycle of falling in and out of love with people, maybe even the same person multiple times. Hey, Cole, my name is Brock from Texas. My main takeaway from this album is how to deal with unrequited love. When I first discovered Igor, I was going through a really tough time in my life and didn't know how to deal with a painful situation. In Tyler's interview with Apple Music, he said that how he made the album was he woke up every day, recorded a song based on a feeling, and then he had a sequence to the album magically.

I think that's what makes Igor so special, the rawness and vulnerability of Tyler. Thank you, Cole, for showing the absolute beauty and musicality of this record. Hey, this is Alex from Queens, New York. I've loved the Igor album since it first came out, but this season of Dissect made me appreciate a song I tended to overlook in my countless listens, but it's now one of my favorites in all of Tyler's discography. think. Learning about the source material of I think, the significance of the four counts, and breaking down the musicality of that dynamic bridge really illuminated how awesome that song is. Many thanks to Cole and Cam for a great season. I'm Deliano from Hartford, South Carolina, and my biggest takeaway from Igor is that it's a cycle of love and rejection. And it's very

beautiful in the fact that he cues that dichotomy of love and the ugliness of it. and just makes this grand, cohesive, and concise album that can be related to for just about anyone. And it's awesome. I just love it. Hi, my name is Gabby from Florida, and I've loved this season of Dysact. I have admired this album for a long time. It's themes of love, obsession, infatuation, and now that you pointed it out, self-love. And I just want to continue this narrative. I was reading The Talented Mr. Ripley while listening to this season, and it paralleled so well.

And I love that this album never gets old, and I will always find new meaning to it. Thank you for dissecting this album. It means so much. What's up, y'all? I'm Nikki from New Orleans, but currently living in Dubai. And certain things come into your life at the perfect time when you need them the most. And that's what this season of dissect was for me. I was going through a breakup of a relationship that I thought would have lasted a lot longer

and had a lot of wasted potential, as Tyler put it. So thank you, Tyler, for creating. something so beautiful and so real, and thank you Cole and the entire Dysect team for this season. Y'all have the best day. This is Amy from San Antonio. When Igor came out, I had just gone through the ending of a relationship that devastated me. Listening to Eeyore was a way of processing all the conflicting emotions I had.

Revisiting this album now with Cole's insightful analysis was such a cathartic experience for me. As always, I appreciate Cole's musical expertise, which allowed me to hear the album like never before, but I was really moved by the emotional vulnerability of the season. Speaking of love and loss at a way that was so relatable, I'm really grateful. Thank you. My name is Ethan, and I'm from Connecticut. Tyler's music came to me at the start of the pandemic, and his music has helped me through much of what these past years have put me through. In the past year, I had to deal with the end of the relationship I really cared about, which felt like an eternity. But with Igor,

the music spoke to me as it showed me that how I was feeling wasn't just me, but other people's felt these feelings too. It helped me heal and it helped me find my peace and come to terms with what had happened. Hi, Cole. My name's Macyo from Seattle, Washington, and I'm 11 years old. I really liked this album, and the first time I ever heard it was during the Grammys. I fell in love, and it means a lot to me that you recorded all your time and put it in all this work just for this one album. Thank you. Hi, my name is Babs and I'm from New Orleans.

To me, Igor is a record that perfectly encapsulates all of the beauty and tragedy that can come with loving someone. From start to finish, it takes you through the incredible heights that you can reach when you're first falling in love, as well as the devastating depths that you can find yourself alone in when it all ends. But most importantly, I think Igor is a modern-day fable about not falling into a cycle with someone at the expense of your own emotional well-being. I'm Olivia from England. Season 10 has really opened my eyes, and my biggest takeaway is just how vulnerable Igor actually is,

because on surface listen, it's so easy to enjoy the music for what it is, but when you listen closely, you can hear so much desperation, and I think that's an emotion that you rarely ever see expressed or shared so openly because of the shame around it. and I'm so grateful that my eyes were kind of opened to just how intimate this album is. Hey, Dissect Team, my name is Amher from Naperville. When I was first introduced to Tyler in 2011, when Goblin dropped, I was turned off by the sound palette and the lyrics.

I never gave him another chance despite hearing more recently of his brilliance. When I saw Igor was being dissected this season, I went back and listened to Flower Boy and its accompanying season, as well as Igor, and I can see he's one of my favorite producers in the game now. I'm blown away by his use of motific development, with music matching the story laid out in the albums. Little flourishes that will come up only once in a song show a level of restraint that very few can exhibit. Thank you to Cole, Camden, and Andrew Atwood for helping me realize his brilliance.

My life is better for it. I'm Ethan from Regina Canada, and Igor is one of my favorite albums all time. Whenever I listen to it, I'm transported back to that basketball court at sunset, where I first listened to it front to back. I was taken on a journey through the motific developments of the instrumentation and lyrics, and I've never had an album moved me emotionally quite like this one. I don't know if I'll ever again have a song hit me as hard as the entirety of Are We Still Friends? which resonated with me to my core. Thank you, Tyler, for creating such a beautiful album,

and thank you Dysect for allowing me to appreciate it more deeply. My name is Aaron. I'm from Pennsylvania. Igor single-handedly overhauled my music taste when I first heard it in May of 2019 when I graduated high school. For me, it's the perfect example of what an album can be. It has a completely unique, unified sound palette, a really strong concept and narrative structure with an emotional core, entire alter ego character that he slips into for performances,

Even the promotion for the album had a specifically curated visual style that fit in perfectly with the music. It's still one of my favorite albums ever, and it's changed how I think about albums in general. Hi, this is Charlie sending this message from Sterling, Scholar. The world is filled with light and dark, beauty and ugliness, piano's and synthesizers. The Saras through duality is what makes the world so alluring yet soul is strong, and the single greatest example of the Sarac's love, a seemingly magical experience, a dashing comet that flows between both sides. Igor encapsulates this perfectly

with the narrative of the hero's journey in which the protagonist is looking for love but in the end realizes that what he was trying to find was himself, acceptance and peace. My name is Cole and I'm from Hawaii. I think that Igor is an outstanding concept album just like Flower Boy was that

really captures what it feels like falling in and out of love. It really feels like a testament to black music and it just manages to combine all these genres like Seoul and R&B and techno and disco and hip-hop very beautifully. And it means a lot to me because at the time I was also ghosted

in a third-wheel position. And I can definitely relate to how hard it must have felt grieving for someone who was still alive. My favorite song is gone, gone because just the harmony makes me cry every time. Hi, my name's Tony. I'm from Virginia. And my biggest takeaway from Igor was the guidance he gave me to navigate my first heartbreak.

I left my friends behind in high school 2019 to give all I had to this relationship. so after it fell apart, Salon became my security blanket. The value did it everything I'd felt, the running, the drowning, the pleading, the screaming, and I had felt my experience almost parallel the narrative of the album, making Igor upon its first listen, the personally most moving experience of my life. Angie, San Fernando Valley. Igor was released when I was 16 years old.

At the time, I was going through my first heartbreak, not fully understanding or knowing how to deal with these difficult emotions. But listening to that album for the first time helped me process and validate these new feelings. It got me through not just that heartbreak, but all the ones that followed. Igor, I believe, is an album about grief and the confusing intense emotions that comes with love and loss. My name is Tomer and I'm from Israel. Igor is everything to me. It's my favorite album of all time.

It's the reason I love music so much. It changed my perspective on music and opened my mind to brand new genres. The way Tyler uses sounds to convey such relatable emotions is magic to me. Thanks for this season for teaching me about the secrets behind the album and for reminding me how truly incredible this piece of art is. Hey Cole, my name is Jeff and I live in Northern California. I'm not gonna lie, I was disappointed in you picking Eagle to dissect it first because I wanted more variety besides another Tyler season, but boy, was I wrong.

As this season has been coming out, I've been dealing with my relationship falling apart after almost three years. And Igor and Dissect has helped me get through it a lot. It has also helped me understand intimate relationships better, and I am to appreciate the beauty of ugly and beauty in Igor, in relationships, and in life. So thank you. Howdy, my name is Matt. I'm from Vancouver, and my biggest takeaway from Igor is seeing how beautifully layered and detailed music can be because this album blew my mind when I listened to it for the first time at 14 years old. And then when I heard that Igor's theme episode that mentioned the melting candy chords, that also blew my mind because I never noticed that.

And so yeah, this album inspired me to take up music and I'm even making music to this day. So yeah, thank you, Igor, thank you dissect. Music is beautiful. My name's Joey and I'm from Ohio. Since it dropped, Igor has been my favorite album of all time, but I learned to appreciate it so much more through this season of dissect. My biggest takeaway is what you said about the bridge on I Think and how it expresses the inexpressible feelings of love that Tyler felt for this person. I was listening to that on my way to class, and it moved me to tears. This is Rubin from Spokane, Washington. My biggest takeaway took place towards the end of Igor.

Our protagonist chooses to continue on his path, rather than living, tip for tap in spite of his ex. This shows great growth, maturity, and the honest love that Tyler had for this person. He doesn't want to hurt himself or his ex on this journey, so he pushes forward when the allure of vengeance and the fear induced by confusion and abandonment are at their strongest. Although the vicious cycle of chasing and running can be difficult to escape, the perseverance of one's true path can lead to green pastures, or at least a departure from the endless circle of infatuation and jealousy. Hi, this is Renee from Atlanta. When Eugur was released, I was going through the hardest breakup of my life.

And listening to every note that was played and sample that was selected and beat that was constructed, this all mimicked my own emotions to a T. And as a musician myself, hearing this album felt like my gospel. This album was a journey of self-discovery and the midst of recovery from codependency. And I continue to find myself in awe with this album and only hope to make music that touches people's souls the way that Igor did for me. Hey cool, it's Ash from Philadelphia. Through this season of Dysect, you have helped me truly recognize how much growth Tyler has exhibited over the past few years, both through his discography and through his presentation of himself as an artist, entrepreneur, and thinker.

After filling my ears with Call Me If You Get Lost every day for over a year now, listening to this season transported me back to the days when all I would listen to was Igor, when I was riddled with heartache and angst and a general distrust of love. For one, artist to be able to make a listener feel such vast emotion between projects is something I think very few have accomplished to the level that Tyler has. Hello everyone. I'm a Wu Pigeon, a science teacher from Taiwan. Eagle is my favorite breakdown album. In this album, I can feel all kinds of emotions when Tyler chased this toxic relationship. I can feel the disappointment, the jealousy, and despair, so on. And I think that

living an empty space in Chinese called Liu Bei is a good way to deal with this relationship, like the finale's bridge. So beautiful, powerful, and more probable. Hey, this is John from Cleveland. I love how Tyler wanted a safe space for him and his crush to feel free, so he wrote, I think, where they can live in that dreamy drum break and be together on the dance floor. Tyler proves he's the best at using so many musical tools

to convey Igor's mood swings as the relationship hits peaks and valleys. From those growling scents to Solange's vocals, samples to song structure, merch to blonde, on bowlcoat wigs, he executed his idea perfectly. Thank you to the whole Dysect Squad for creating another magical season. All right, I hope you enjoyed hearing those as much as I did. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts, who had so many submissions this season that we had to split them up.

You can hear the second batch in next week's special bonus episode. A big thank you to everyone who took the ride with us this season. With this being the 10th season of Dysect, I can't help it to express my immense gratitude for the privilege of making this show all these years. Whether you're new to dissect or a long-time listener, I truly appreciate you. Thank you to Camden Ostrander for another beautiful collaboration this season. Our growing friendship and connection is something that I truly cherish. Thank you to Kevin Pooler, who joined us recently as Dissect's audio engineer and has killed it from day one. Thank you to

bureaucratic for yet another great theme, 10 seasons in, and you somehow top yourself every time. Thanks as always to Andrew Atwood for the Immaculate Song Recreations and to So Wiley for yet another beautiful original score in our season opener. Also thanks to Justin's sales at The Ringer and everyone behind the scenes at Spotify that make Dysect possible. If you want to stay in touch over the break, follow at Dysect Podcast on Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. I'm also going to make more of an effort to be active on Dysk's Discord. So join that if you're interested at the link in this episode's show notes. Oh, and we still have some merch for sale this season at Dysectpodcast.com. All right, I think that's it. I'll talk to you all next season, where we'll dissect yet another musical masterwork.

because great art deserves more than a swipe.