TYLER, THE CREATOR 'DON’T TAP THE GLASS' REVIEW

Vasili Papathanasopoulos
Jul 21
2 min read

Updated: Jul 28

Image: Supplied.

Having teased new music over the past few days, Tyler, The Creator’s ninth studio album, Don’t Tap the Glass arrived without fanfare; which feels entirely in line with the music itself.

A bold, instinct-driven pivot - the body of work is an energetic, genre-blurring project that places an emphasis on movement over meaning, and feeling over form. Clocking in at just under 30 minutes, the surprise release is lean, loose, and deliberately unpolished. Gone are the grand concepts and alter egos that defined IGOR and Call Me If You Get Lost. In their place: jagged drum programming, warped synths, and a sense of spontaneity that borders on chaotic - but never without thought.

Tyler isn’t asking for attention here - he’s moving quickly, instinctively, and refusing to explain as he goes. The result: one of his most rhythmically adventurous records yet. For longtime fans, it’s his biggest stylistic shift since Cherry Bomb, but this time with a sense of rhythm and cohesion that makes it feel far more dialed-in. Pulling from house, Jersey club, broken beat, and electronic funk influences, the songs bleed into each other with ambient textures, pitch-shifted vocal snippets, and an analog hiss that gives the album a mixtape-like flow. The production is fast, colourful, and layered with synths, pulsing bass lines, and off-kilter transitions that make the listening experience feel more like an enigmatic live DJ set than a traditional LP.

Vocally, Tyler takes a backseat. His voice appears sparingly - chopped, looped, filtered into the background - becoming more of a percussive layer than a storytelling tool. Don’t Tap the Glass isn’t a lyrical album; and it doesn’t pretend to be. The emphasis is on the body, not the brain. From the twitchy drums to the fluid tempo changes, this collection of songs is engineered for movement - its soundscapes are messy, physical and alive.

But that freedom comes with its own risks. Listeners drawn to the musicians emotional precision and conceptual detail may find this release too loose or underdeveloped. There are few tracks on initial listen that could feel as though they are not fully realised, with the off-the-cuff energy at times feeling unfinished. Still, there’s a strange magnetism to its rawness. With each listen, the albums subtleties start to reveal themselves: the buried synth lines, the abrupt transitions, the moments where chaos gives way to clarity.

What makes Don’t Tap the Glass compelling isn’t that it’s perfect - it’s that it doesn’t try to be. It’s an artist letting go of control and creating purely on instinct. There’s no narrative arc to decode, no hidden alter ego to uncover. It’s music that exists in the moment - and asks you to do the same. In that sense, it might be Tyler’s most liberating work to date.

Don’t Tap the Glass is out now!