Ranking Tyler, the Creator's 9 albums, including Don't Tap the Glass

USA Today

23-07-2025

With Monday's surprise release of Don't Tap the Glass, rapper Tyler, the Creator kept his unreal album run alive with a pulse-pounding club album meant to stupid-dance along to with all your friends.
Tyler Okonma came up with the groundbreaking Odd Future music collective that boasted supreme talents like Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, Casey Veggies and Jasper Dolphin, among many other standouts. His career stared out with so much promise, but also... so many trigger warnings. His early music needs the context of when it was created, as some of its lyrics welcome any problematic -isms you'd like to apply.
Tyler's early career established him as one of rap's unafraid shock jocks, and he courted plenty of controversy for some of his most upsetting lyrical content. However, around 2015, Okonma started to shed his more aggressive tendencies, and his music richened and richened as he shared more and more of his heart. To listen to the early material is to understand it's not the artist he is now. He's grown up and then some.
However, Tyler never lost his edge, far from it. His rapping got progressively better as he ditched the shock-and-awe of his earlier material without abandoning the promise of his best early bars. In 2025, Okonma stands tall as one of the most creative, dynamic musicians of his generation.
His transformation has been genuinely thrilling to follow, as the Goblin turned into a Flower Boy right before our very eyes. His genius and soul shine through everything he does now.
As we all hit the dance floor and go wild for Tyler, the Creator's latest, let's rank his nine albums so far as to how they all stack up with each other.
Very NSFW language to follow.
9. Bastard
Okonma considers Bastard an album, so we'll include it. The album is a difficult balance of Tyler's radiant potential and his jaw-dropping offensiveness. Some of the most aggressive lyrics pour out of Bastard like sour milk on a hot sidewalk, replete with objectively grotesque imagery from a bewilderingly disturbed anti-protagonist. If you accept depiction does not equal endorsement as much as it represents a horrifying fever dream of, as Pitchfork described, "shock art." There's an innocence even still hidden in the crevices, one of an artist still finding his legs and not even past the first chapter of a much more enriching career trajectory. It's his weakest album by default, but "Pigs Fly" is a decent teaser for the artist Okonma evolves into... eventually. Yes, Bastard, like Goblin and Wolf, requires content advisories aplenty and a generous read on the most vile bars Tyler packs within, but like those other two early projects, you can at least map out Okonma's strengths.
8. Goblin
Okonma told GQ back in 2018 that he regards Goblin as "horrible," which might be a bit harsh on his breakthrough album that established him as the rap game's unapologetic prankster-provocateur. "Yonkers" is the best distillation of his early Eminem-style shock jabs mixed with his growly, haunting flow. Goblin, for better or worse, confirmed Okonma's place as one of the genuine early stars of the 2010s. When Kendrick Lamar called Okonma out on his seminal "Control" verse on the list of the rappers K.Dot wished to obliterate in 2013, it confirmed the hype for Odd Future's impish wonder was real and formidable. Goblin felt like an arsenic-laced screed from the depth of Hell with brass-knuckle verve on the delivery, one Okonma would soon scribble all over and reframe with class with his later, better albums. Sure, you might leave Goblin horribly offended, but it's hard not to still Okonma's grit on the mic. He belonged. However, "She," his Frank Ocean collaboration, hinted to the more sensitive side of Okonma's persona that would soon explode in vibrant color.
7. Wolf
Released at the height of Adult Swim's prank-sensation Loiter Squad, Wolf is the grand finale for Okonma's edgelord fury and probably a crucial text to how The Lonely Island spoofed him in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping with Chris Redd's Hunter the Hungry. Okonma embraced more vibrancy in the production with Wolf, with "Tamale" a great example of him mixing his patented mock-mischief with a ranger of a beat. Wolf also finds Okonma finally looking inwardly in ways that would soon define him as an artist. "Colossus" finds Tyler grappling with his fame as some of his fans approach him at Six Flags for a selfie when he just wants to ride a roller coaster and buy a churro. It's Okonma's spiky answer to Eminem's "Stan," and it's a stunner in writing and delivery in how fandom evolved in 2010s from the eyes of someone getting more recognized than ever. All these years later, Wolf plays like the final frontier for an artist yet to discover his brilliant second gear. It's still a compelling rap album with some insane highs, but it's also inherently flawed in the way Tyler's early work was. However, even if some of the lyrics haven't aged well, it's a testament to talent that it's still pretty dang good.
6. Don't Tap the Glass
Less than a year after dropping the stone-cold masterpiece that was Chromakopia, Okonma didn't owe the world a Four Loko-fueled banger of a rap-house album. However, Don't Tap the Glass only comes from an artist at the absolute peak of their power. Okonma wrote that he wanted the album to help people loosen up a bit in a culture where we hold ourselves back from having fun at risk of being judged. Don't Tap the Glass isn't meant to be dissected as much as it's meant to be danced to, and the production is as free and innovative as Okonma has been in his career so far without sacrificing his sonic hallmarks. If you want to hear Tyler spit, "Don't Tap That Glass / Tweakin'" and "Stop Playing with Me" scratch the itch. If you just want to vibe to Tyler in roller rink-mode, "Ring Ring Ring" and "Don't You Worry Baby" take care of that. Sure, it's not one of his best albums by his lofty standards, but it's a sun-kissed, high-living joy ride with disco-ball dopamine flow.
5. Call Me If You Get Lost
This might be controversial, as Call Me If You Get Lost remains one of the defining rap albums of the decade. A brisk victory lap after 2019's Igor, with DJ Drama guiding us through an eclectic gallery of Tyler rapping over some of the best beats of his career and a murder's row of guest verses at his disposal. The way Call Me If You Get Lost moves stands as some of the most staggering pacing of Okonma's discography. In an era where most artists are ditching the art of the album in favor of song-stuffed streaming buffets, Tyler gave us his most concise and arguably the most confident album of his career so far. He'd softened significantly since the Goblin days, yes, but remained sharp as ever. Tyler, we needed you, and you turned the noise up. This album is a magnificent jaunt for an artist at the height of his powers.
4. Cherry Bomb
Cherry Bomb gets better and better as time goes on. The artist Tyler, the Creator is today finally clicked into place with Cherry Bomb, an electric pounding heart-engine with guitar riffs, Charlie Wilson crooning over one of Okonma's best songs in his catalog and an irresistible buoyancy of an artist finally ready to come into his own. Sure, Flower Boy was the official declaration of Okonma's completed metamorphosis, but Cherry Bomb took us into the kitchen and let us watch Tyler cook his new persona up with explosive risks and unrelenting passion. It's supremely underrated as what it portends for Okonma's career, and it's got some of his most exciting creative choices. It's more experimental than Flower Boy, and he's still dusting off a wee bit of the cringe from the Wolf trilogy days. However, Cherry Bomb remains a tube of Mentos in a Diet Coke liter. It's a jubilant mess of unbridled energy, an apocalyptic rager of an artist in free-falling, truly fearless reinvention.
3. Flower Boy
Flower Boy is the arrival. It's arguably one of the most consequential albums for modern hip-hop, and the fully fleshed transformation of Tyler, the Creator from talented troll to whimsical, lovestruck rap auteur. Okonma breaks his heart wide open for an intensely personal album about self-discovery and the romance intertwined. Some of the songs on Flower Boy play as revelatory for the artist Tyler was a few discs prior, tender to the ears and warming to the soul. The lighter tough unquestionably made him a better rapper, too, with "I Ain't Got Time!" and "Who Dat Boy" blistering examples of laser-focused delivery and jolt-force lyricism. If you got used to the brash Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy hit with the kind of grounded shock that lasts. It's an album that grows on you the more you listen to it. Okonma blossoms into the artist he was meant to be with Flower Boy, completely unencumbered with his rusted switchblade angst. It's an act of artistic elevation, for him and us.
2. Chromakopia
Chromakopia is one of the best albums of the 2020s. Here, Tyler is in full command of his new self and fully prepared to dole out his earned wisdom while also popping our ear holes with sucker-punch rap classics. "Noid" stands as the album's statement track, one where Okonma deals with the unending stardom that has followed him since his music became fully accessible. It's a gripping dive into the universal psychosis of the outside world looking in on the chosen few. The astounding track works perfectly as a spine-chilling anthem for that funny feeling many of us had in late 2024, that "Goodfellas Henry Hill watching the helicopters" paranoia of a new age creeping up right behind us with and without waring. Tyler taking a pulse check of his newfound acclaim gave us one of his most singularly riveting works to date, one full of empathy and bravado. Features from Schoolboy Q, GloRilla, Sexyy Red, Lil Wayne and particularly Doechii add even more life to what may well be Okonma's most balanced album between his joyous surge rapping and his soulful ballads. It's a special album that crash landed to Earth during such an uneasy time, meeting the moment with unreal might.
1. Igor
If Flower Boy was Tyler, the Creator breaking his heart open, Igor is him fully giving it to his audience for good... even if we just wind up being friends. Igor is an unbelievable mode shift for Okonma, a bare-soul love letter to "the one" that ends in friend-zone tragedy. "Earfquake" is Tyler's masterpiece, a bold declaration of affection as deep as the Grand Canyon and as moving as a rushing river after a hard rain. Charlie Wilson's backing vocals will give you goosebumps, as will the fact that Tyler can take your whole breath away with a song with exactly no rapping. The song is even more remarkable when you consider where we started with Okonma, as the vulnerability to plead with his beloved to the world not to leave him would've been unheard of a decade prior when Bastard hit Odd Future's Tumblr profile. This is Tyler's "Channel Orange," and it's just as extraordinary. By the end of it, you're emotionally spent and thoroughly stunned. It's a perfect album.