Call Me If You Get Lost Review

Hiring DJ Drama to shout across your record is a joke and a thesis at once. Tyler grew up on Gangsta Grillz mixtapes, and framing his most expensive sounding album as one lets him rap the way he has not since Wolf, in long unhooked runs with nothing to prove and everything to show off. Lumberjack is two minutes of pure swagger.

Sir Baudelaire and Corso set the tone with brass and Drama's ad libs stacked on top. The Sweet and I Thought You Wanted to Dance suite goes full reggae ballad and earns every minute of it. Massa is the reckoning, a flatly written accounting of what money and attention have done to him. Then Wilshire closes the argument: one loop, no chorus, an affair told in order with no attempt anywhere in it to make himself look good.

It is the best thing he has written, and the album knows it, because almost nothing follows. The flaws are small. Sixteen tracks is two or three too many, the travel imagery repeats, and Drama's tags will grate on anyone who did not grow up with them. Reception was the strongest of his career and a second rap award followed. This is the record where the technique finally catches the ambition.