Dissect - S4E8 - “Boredom” by Tyler, the Creator

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

Our season long analysis of Flower Boy continues with the song “Boredom.” Still in the isolation of his garden shed, Tyler’s boredom reveals an underlying loneliness and aimlessness that triggers his unhealthy defense mechanisms.  New episodes of Dissect release every Tuesday. Visit spotify.com/promo/Dissect for 60 free days of Spotify Premium. Follow @dissectpodcast on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify Studios, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Today we continue our serialized analysis of Flower Boy by Tyler the Creator. On our last episode, we examined the album's centerpiece Garden Shed. There we heard Tyler abandon his sports car, his emotional protective shell, and address his attraction to men within the safety and seclusion of his garden shed. In terms of the album's narrative, we interpreted this as a powerful moment of personal acknowledgement and revelation, but also one done in privacy. Having acknowledged this part of

himself to himself, Tyler will now work to express himself to the dream partner he's been searching for since the song See You Again. And as we'll hear, this will be a process unto itself, one that raises the same insecurities and defense mechanisms we heard on the first half of Flower Boy. Narratively speaking, Tyler at this point in the album is still in his hiding spot, still in the isolation of his garden shed. The effects of his ongoing seclusion will begin to reveal themselves as Flower Boy continues into its next track. The subject of our episode today, Boredom.

Bordom is written and produced by Tyler the Creator and features Rex Orange County and Anna of the North. Additional vocals are provided by Corinne Bailey Ray. In conversation with Gerard Carmichael, Tyler shared an interesting tidbit about the song's musical inspiration. I wrote this song over the chords of God, The Child by Stevie Wonder. I figured out the chords, looped it, and just had it playing for hours in my room.

Composed in the year 1939, the song God Bless the Child is a classic jazz standard written by renowned singer Billy Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr. It was first recorded by Holiday in 1941. But God bless the child that's got his own. God Bless the Child has since become a staple in jazz standard repertoire and was named one of the songs of the century by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. The song has been performed by countless artists over the years, including Sunny Rollins, Ella Fitzgerald,

but God bless a child that's got his own. Aritha Franklin. God bless the child that's got his old. And one Stevie Wonder. Tyler stated that he figured out the chords of Stevie Wonder's rendition of God Bless the Child and wrote the song Boredom to them. But what's interesting is that one cannot simply play the chords of God Bless the Child verbatim and sing Bordom over the top of them. Rather, it appears Tyler took bits and pieces of God Bless the Child, augmented and rearranged them in different ways to create what we hear on Bortem.

This is actually a pretty cool approach to songwriting. At its heart, it resembles the hip-hop technique of sampling, where one samples or takes a small piece of a recorded song, manipulates or augments it in various ways, and creates an entirely new composition from it. As a quick example of sampling, let's hear how Tyler's favorite producer Farrell and the Neptunes sampled a 1968 cover of God Bless the Child by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. God bless the child that's got his own. That's got his own.

The Neptune sample a small clip of this rendition of God Bless the Child near the end of the track. The Neptune's sample that four-note horn hit and loop it, and this becomes the basis of the song The Funeral by the rap duo Clips. Whether they drag me, bound me, hollow point round me, gum me off the side of a bridge and drown me. The Neptune's flip of God Bless the Child is a clear example of sampling, taking a fragment of an existing song and repurposing it for a new, composition. Tyler takes a related approach to his flip of Wonder's rendition of God Bless the Child, but rather than sample the actual recording, he instead pulls fragments of the song's chord

progressions and repurposes them. Let's take a look at exactly how Tyler does this. In this section, Wonder plays a sequence of a G minor, a C-7, and an F-major. Now I want to spend a moment talking about this chord progression, not only because Tyler re-reactors, imagines it for boredom, but also because it taps into a staple of jazz music, what is known as the 251 chord progression. The 251 chord progression is a sequence of three chords and is the most common chord progression in all of jazz. The numbers 2, 5, and 1 are used to generically represent certain chords within the framework of a given key signature. This will make more sense if I explain it through an example. What you just heard are the seven notes that make up a C major scale.

These seven notes are the primary ingredients of a song in the key of C major. In music theory, these seven notes are labeled with numbers called scale degrees. Scale degrees are actually quite straightforward. The first note in our C major scale is a C. This is scale degree 1. The second note in the scale, a D, is scale degree number 2. The third note in this scale, E, is scale degree 3, and so on. This labeling system continues for all seven notes in the scale. A similar labeling system is also applied to chords

built on these scale degrees. For example, a chord built on scale degree 1, a C major chord, is referred to as the 1 chord in the C major key signature. A chord built on scale degree number 2, a D minor, is referred to as the 2 chord. A chord built on the 5th scale degree, a G major, is called the 5 chord and so on. So let's bring this all back to the 251 progression, the progression we heard on God Bless the Child and the one I said was the most common chord progression in all of jazz. A 251 progression is simply that, a two chord, a five chord, and a one chord in a given key signature. God Bless the Child is in the key of F major, so let's build a 251 progression in F major and see what comes out. We know that F is scale degree number one in F major. So to

find our 2 chord, the first chord in our 2-5-1 progression, we just need to count up to the second scale degree of an F-major scale. The second scale degree is a G, and so we build our chord on G. There's our 2 chord. Next, we need a 5 chord, so let's count up 5-degree. Scale degree number 5 is a C, so we build a chord on C. There's our 5 chord. Finally, we need a 1 chord. That's easy enough. Scale degree 1 and F-major is F. So we build a chord on F. And so there we have our 251 chord progression in the key of F major, G minor, C7, and F major. This is a chord progression we found in God Bless the Child.

2.5.1. Now let's see how Tyler uses this 251 chord fragment in Boredom. 2.5.1. 2.5.1. Like he noted in conversation with Gerard Carmichael, Tyler takes the 2-5-1 fragment that's played just once through on God Bless the Child and loops it. That is, he repeats it over and over. He also transposes these chords into a different key signature,

which basically means he plays the same chord progression in a different tonal register. So whereas God Bless the Child was in the key of F major, boredom is in the key of A-flat major. So let's take what we learned about constructing two-five-one progressions and see if we can figure out the chords he's playing on this section of boredom. Okay, so first we need a two chord. We start on scale degree 1, A-flat, and count up to scale degree 2. Scale degree 2 is a B-flat, so we build a chord on B-flat.

There's our 2-cord. Next, we need a 5 chord, so we count up 5 scale degrees. Scale degree 5 is E-flat, so we build a chord on E-flat. Finally, we need a 1-cord. which in the key of A-flat is just that, an A-flat. So our 2-5-1 progression in the key of A-flat is a B-flat minor, an E-flat 7, and an A-flat major, 2-5-1.

For Bordom, Tyler loops this progression three times and adds his own rhythm. We first hear this 251 in Bordom's introduction played on guitar. So, even though Tyler admits, began with a direct copy of a chord fragment in God Bless the Child, through rhythm, instrumentation, repetition, a new key signature, and a new melody composed over the top of these chords, the reference becomes indistinguishable. That is, if Tyler hadn't stated he wrote boredom over the chords found in God Bless the Child, it's highly unlikely that anyone, myself included, would have ever connected the two songs together. As we discussed earlier, the same phenomenon happens with sampling.

Despite using actual audio excerpts from old recordings, the way that samples are manipulated and looped, it often becomes extremely difficult to pick out the original source the sample was taken from. Again, Tyler's approach to boredom is akin to sampling, but rather than sampled the actual track, he quote-unquote samples the chord progression, making it as own through manipulation of rhythm, instrumentation, repetition, and melody. Now, the 251 progression we just discussed at length is the progression we hear throughout the majority of bored him. But there is one more progression that appears a few times throughout the song, and it's actually the progression the song begins with. Okay, it's actually really cool what Tyler does here.

He begins with the 251 progression in a flat major we just examined at length, B minor 7, E flat 7, and A flat major 7. Now instead of repeating this progression like he does in the part we discussed at length, he actually modulates to a new key, G flat major, and plays a 251 progression in this new key signature. So we have a 251 in A flat major followed by a 251 in G flat major. Next, Tyler modulates to yet another key signature, E major, and you guessed it, plays a 251 progression in the key of E major. Pretty cool, right? We have three 251 progressions in a row and three different key signatures. 5.1. This is what's known as sequencing, repeating the same musical phrase, but in a higher or lower pitch class. In this case, Tyler sequences a 251 progression three times, and each time the progression

is lowered in pitch. By the way, sequencing is one of the main reasons why the 251 progression is the most common progression in jazz. One can string together an indefinite amount of 251 progressions, creating continuity of composition, but at the same time providing a good amount of harmonic variety. Tyler's use of the 251 on the introduction of boredom is a perfect example of this. In just nine chords in less than 20 seconds, Tyler is able to imply three different key signatures or tonal areas, which again I have to point out never happens in hip-hop or pop music for that matter. As we've heard all season, Tyler's ability to take disparate influences, this time a staple of jazz music, and seamlessly integrate them into a modern,

hip-hop-leaning, commercially appealing package is, in my opinion, one of his greatest strengths. In this way, he transcends all the typical roles one would label him. He's not a rapper, he's not a producer, he's not a singer, he's not a songwriter, he's not a storyteller, he's not a composer. He's actually all of these things wrapped into one. And to me, boredom is one of the greatest examples of what seems to be an effortless assimilation of all of these things. Case in point, Tyler turned this

into this. It's hard to think of too many people with the ability to make this transformation. When we return, we'll continue our analysis of boredom by diving into the song's lyrics. But first, a word from our sponsors. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we detailed how Tyler

created the two main chord progressions that comprise the majority of boredom's harmonic framework. The song begins with a sequence of three two five one progressions played on guitar, while featured artist Rex Orange County and Corinne Bailey sing, When You're Having Fun, Time Flies Out the Window It Goes. These lines actually contrasts with what will be the song's main subject, boredom, and the causes and effects of boredom. By establishing that time flies when you're happy and having fun, Tyler being bored, will imply that he's not happy or having fun, at least in this particular moment. Tyler explained in conversation with Gerard Carmichael that the song was inspired by a slow

Saturday afternoon. But as we'll hear, his analysis of his boredom reveals some deeper underlying issues. I wrote that literally. It was 5 p.m. on a Saturday laying on my back, looking like so bored. It was nothing to do. No one was hitting me back. And it was nothing to eat but dry cereal. And I'm just sitting there like, what the fuck am I going to do? do. It was weird to me because it's like I'm in a tags bracket where I could kind of go you do anything. Do whatever. I have all these cars. I could go drive. Yeah. I have nowhere to go. And I'm just bored. And it was it was just confusing to me because it's like, you didn't understand how you could possibly be bored when it's, but it was nothing interesting

to do at the moment, which was crazy. So I was like, fuck it. I'm a, I'm gonna write a song about it. Tyler is confused to how he could possibly be bored despite having enough disposable income to do practically anything he wants. While not explicitly stated in this interview, we can deduce from the themes of the album up until this point to determine that his boredom is partly fueled by his loneliness. His loneliness is fueled by a lack of a love life or partner, and his lack of a partner is partially due to him not yet coming to turns with his sexual orientation fully. Understanding this, let's get into the first performance of the song's hook, which is again sung by Rex Orange County. Find some time to do something.

Find some time. Find some time to do something. Find some time. Find some time to do something. Regarding his collaboration with Tyler, Rex Orange County, whose real name is Alexander O'Connor, told NME, quote, he just picked me up on email like everyone else,

and it came like any other collaboration would. I was pretty convinced that it wasn't. him at first, then it became clear that it was really him. The song Boredom is actually something that he wrote and I came into. He wanted to hear my voice on it, so that song is pretty much entirely him, and it's just my voice that he wanted to try out for the start, unquote. Indeed, despite the song's many guest singers, writing credits for Bortem are solely given to Tyler, meaning that he wrote all the vocal parts his guests are singing. The hook of Bordom, the section that we just heard, is particularly catchy, almost anthem-like.

According to Tyler, this was done purposefully, inspired by white girls who attend Coachella. I was like, nobody want to hear this deep-ass voice rap for that long. Let me shut the fuck up and do a hook so all the white girls at Coachella could sing this shit. And I'm not lying, doing festivals, you realize white people love singing along this shit. Yeah. That's why the fucking boredom is two minutes of justice like... Sway. It's one thing to say that you're going to write a hook everyone is going to sing.

It's another thing to actually execute this. What Tyler does extremely well for the hook of boredom is pair of very simple, memorable melody, one that anyone can sing pretty easily, with a very simple lyric, one that anyone can pretty easily memorize. Indeed, the entire hook uses just one line, find some time to do something.

Likewise, the majority of the melody is just two alternating notes, G and A-flat. There at the end, when the melody stops alternating between G and A-flat and descends, It does so using stepwise motion. That is, it doesn't take any drastic leaps and register, ones that would be hard to sing or memorize. All of this, the ease of melody, the repetition of melody,

and the simplicity of the single line lyric. It all makes for an extremely singable, memorable refrain, one that a person could hear once and be able to instantly sing along. After about a minute-long solo guitar and vocal introduction, boredom suddenly shifts instrumentation. Most noticeable is the entrance of drums. On top of this, electronic keys take over the harmony, playing the 251 progression initially heard on guitar. We first hear this change of instrumentation paired with the repetition of the song's anthemic hook we just dissected.

Let's now skip ahead when Tyler enters Bordham for the first time, over a minute and a half into the song. Portum, pour them, broad box the body here I call them. If we're talking about real bills, that's my stomach, he ain't saw him. I've been in this fucking room. So long my eyeballs are turning the dry wall. My friends suck the fuck him. I'm over him. Hi y'all.

Y'all ain't hit me all day. What the fuck is the problem? Isn't me because I'm not solved. I'm f***, boy. After repeating boredom eight times, Tyler begins his verse describing the empty cereal boxes in his room, rapping, Boy, my bedroom floor is cereal burial.

I'm serious. I ate them all, dry boxes, bodies. Yeah, I caught him. Tyler seems to be playing on the phrase, serial killer. cheekily applying it to his murdering or eating of all the dry cereal in the house, which he does at a boredom. Tyler continues, I've been in this fucking room so long my eyeballs are turning to drywall.

Drywall is what most interior walls are made from, and Tyler plays off the word to cleverly express that he's been sitting and staring at the walls of his room because he has nothing to do. Next, Tyler lashes out against his friends for not responding to his calls before concluding the verse asking why this might be. He asks, Is it me because I'm not solved? Being ignored by his friends has Tyler feeling insecure, setting the stage for verse two in which Tyler gets more introspective about the cause of his boredom. Getting desperate as hell, cellular not amusing and I hope someone well messes me with some plans that are amusing as well, because I haven't seen the exit of these walls that before this morning.

Got some cars like a handle, but nowhere for performance. My stomach ain't being yelling. I need some Tyler, but I hate eating solo. Tyler begins a lot. I'm walking lots at sunset to border. Y'allie dingy don't. I can't be alone. I've been starting to feel like I don't know anyone. So now I'm staying at my cell and fucking gone.

I ain't knowing no idea when I'm gone. Tyler begins verse two in a similar fashion to verse one, stating how his phone isn't entertaining him and that he wishes his friends would text him with something to do. Midway through the verse, Tyler says, Got some cars I can handle, but nowhere for performance. Here we get yet another reference to Tyler's sports cars on Flower Boy. Despite having multiple cars,

Tyler is nowhere to drive them, has no end destination, and perhaps most importantly, no one to ride passenger with him. Like we've been doing all season, we can view the car as a symbol for Tyler's wealth, and how despite having wealth, he's still unfulfilled,

still lonely, still searching for meaning, a place to go. Tyler continues peeling back the layers beneath his boredom, saying, My stomach angry and yelling, I need some food I could order, but I hate eating solo. Need someone, we can loiter in parking lots as sunsets at the border. Here Tyler reveals an underlying loneliness beneath the surface of his boredom. He longs for someone to eat and watch sunsets with, and we instantly think about his continuous search for his dream partner laid out on CU again. As the final verse of boredom concludes, Tyler's boredom, loneliness, and isolation hits rock bottom.

He says, I can't be alone. I've been starting to feel like I don't know anyone. So now I'm staring at my ceiling fucking going like I have no idea where I'm going. There's not much to interpret here. Tyler's boredom has clearly led him to question his entire existence. He feels estranged from his friends, he's lonely, and he's directionless. In just a minute, we'll see how these concluding lines help to propel the album's ongoing narrative. but before we go there, I would like to quickly acknowledge some pretty cool musical development Tyler employs here at the end of boredom. After a performance of the song's hook, Tyler begins to introduce orchestral instruments over the electronic keyboard playing the 251

progression. What was first heard on bass is now played on cello, and as the section continues, we hear more and more string embellishments enter, a trilling violin section here, a pizicado or plucked melodic line there. Again, all these new instruments are riffing over the 251 that has been established throughout the track. Tyler is able to stretch this instrumental section nearly a minute due to the constant entrance of new instruments, melodic lines, and embellishments. Tyler then drops a brand new 808 dominant drumbeat, over which the electronic keyboard continues to play.

But rather than the 251 progression in E flat major, we've been hearing throughout the majority of boredom, he modulates down a full step and repeats continuously a 251 in the key of G flat major. This outro lasts nearly a minute, making the final two minutes of boredom mostly an instrumental experience, save for some vocal ad libs. I point all this out to acknowledge Tyler's compositional skill. As we've heard all season, he very often gets the very most of his musical material through motivic development, changes in instrumentation, orchestra-like ornamentation,

and a handful of other compositional techniques. Case and point, boredom is Flowerboy's longest song at 5 minutes and 20 seconds, and yet it's only built on two chord progressions, both of which are variations of the 251 chord fragment he pulled from God bless the child. Just that tiny amount of inspiration from Stevie Wonder was all Tyler needed to create an anthem for the malaise of his generation. Because at the heart of boredom,

there is a certain feeling that Tyler tapped into, a feeling that seems to be permeating more and more in contemporary society. Bortem, I think, right now, to me, is like your Billy Jean. Really? It really is kind of a, seeing people connect with that song. That song, like, I think I called you and said, I don't know if this song is creating an emotion for me or if it's like the soundtrack to something I already feel.

Like, that's how powerful I think it is. Drod Carmichael says to Tyler, quote, I don't know if this song is creating an emotion for me or if it's the soundtrack to something I already feel, unquote. Personally, I would argue the latter. I think Tyler tapped into a generational feeling of boredom, of malaise. Because we now live in a world with an unprecedented amount of entertainment options. We have access to an incessant, constantly refreshing stream of stimulation in the palm of our hands.

But our entertainment and our experience of the world is increasingly digitized, is increasingly virtual. So to do something is often to do nothing. That is, we often are physically stationary for hours staring at a screen. We get enough stimulation to be entertained, but not to be fulfilled. This is an unresolvable dichotomy of emotion, to be at once stimulated and unsatisfied, to be engrossed but not engaged. And when we extrapolate the song from Flower Boy's narrative, what I hear in boredom is an anthem for a generation that is overstimulated and malnourished,

a generation who are forever entertained and forever bored. In terms of the album's narrative, there's a few key plot points that occur near the end of boredom that we need to address. The first occurs at the end of verse two. Let's take another listen. Riggie dingy don't. I can't be alone. I've been started to feel like I don't know anyone.

So now I'm saying that my cell and fucking gone, I ain't knowing no idea when I'm gone. As we stated earlier, Tyler's boredom leads him to questioning his entire existence as he expresses estrangement from his friends, his loneliness and his aimlessness. This rock bottom moment is followed by Tyler, muttering to himself, damn, I gotta get out of here. Remember, narratively speaking, Tyler

is still in isolation. At the end of the song Pothole, we heard him exit his car and enter the garden shed. This isolation has driven him to a kind of emotional breaking point that we just turned on boredom's second verse. At the end of boredom, we hear just how Tyler chooses to escape his emotional turmoil. You guys over, we got some tickets to see them. Right now, we got some new music only here on golf radio. God, I love this shit. It would seem that the loneliness and uncertainty brought on by his isolation was getting too much for Tyler to handle.

After the apparent breakthrough that was Garden Shed, we find now Tyler digressing back to his old defense mechanisms. He gets back into a sports car, which we know he uses as an emotional protective shield and speeds off. And just like Hoodap Boy, Tyler avoids dealing with his underlying issues by parading his ego and creating chaos. Indeed, Flower Boy's next track is an emotional 180 from the sentiments of boys. boredom, a song in which Tyler begs for someone's time. We now find him saying the exact opposite. Of course, we're talking about Flower Boy's ninth track, I Ain't Got Time. A song will examine note by note, line by line.

Next time on Dissect. Dysect is written and produced by me. Original theme music by Beirocratic. Song Recreations by Andrew Atwood. audio editing by Eric Bass and me. If you enjoy Dysect, please help me spread the word by telling a friend,

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Okay, thanks, everyone. I'll talk to you next week.