Advertisement

Wrestling With Tyga

The cognitive dissonance of enjoying the music of the hitmaking rapper we love to hate

Before he was the corny rapper we’ve come to know, Tyga was a contestant on a failed MTV game show called “Bustas”: Footage unearthed by TMZ in 2012 shows a teenage Tyga getting fervently booed mid-freestyle and stiffly snap dancing in front of a green screen. “Grew up not too tough, parents got a Range Rover Cl600, doing it big,” he says, lying about his upbringing in Compton. “Not too much hard, but I’m still street.” Tyga later laughed it all off as a scripted joke, but that early spotlight went on to embody everything the California rapper would come to represent—an artist willing to fabricate an image, background, and personality if it got him even an inch closer to relevance. It’s why Tyga has become synonymous with corny. And it’s why I’m conflicted about his summer comeback with the Top 10 hit “Taste” and its follow-up, “Swish,” two songs I hate to love.

Tyga’s recent success is especially shocking because, just a few months ago, it seemed like his career might be over for good. In February, he released his sixth studio album, Kyoto, with a cover that bizarrely displays a tiger-woman hybrid ass up, in front of a red circle that resembles the Japanese flag. When asked about the picture, Tyga’s only response was, “It’s art, man.” The album was a critical and commercial bomb.

The Kyoto debacle was hardly the first of his career. After breaking out with Lil Wayne’s Young Money crew and “Rack City” at the start of this decade, his falling off seemed certified. Soon enough, people moved on, not even caring to make him an easy meme punchline anymore. He was left to fade away into irrelevance. But again, this is Tyga we’re talking about. Since then, he’s consistently found ways to scratch and claw back to any spotlight, like when he converted the vitriolic reaction to 2015’s The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty into a reality television series called “Kingin’ With Tyga” (MTV described the show as: “Tyga and his crew… indulge in a lavish lifestyle made famous by his Instagram account, which currently has more than 5 million followers”).

But the most fascinating aspect of Tyga’s summer 2018 return is how he’s focusing on the music and giving the attention-seeking antics a break. He’s now taking advantage of his own nostalgia, linking with producer D.A. Doman, who laces him with DJ Mustard–type beats that are distinctly reminiscent of the DJ Mustard–produced “Rack City.” Then there are the videos for “Taste” and “Swish,” which feel like throwbacks to an era when seemingly blindfolded labels wrote budgets for artists like Jagged Edge to live out their most elaborate beachfront skydiving fantasies. He even dropped an extremely self-aware freestyle on L.A. Leakers that was reminiscent of the era of his career when his Well Done freestyles made waves.

Admittedly, “Taste” is filled with typically cringe-y Tyga lines—“Watch me stick to your bitch like a spray tan”—but there’s a confidence and flow to the track that still makes it irresistibly engaging. “Swish” is even better, playing like a tightly edited, raunchier rehash of “Taste” that trades in an unnecessary Offset verse for a dance breakdown that’s able to rival both “Nice for What” and “In My Feelings.”

A decade ago, the world was introduced to Tyga on an album that was executive produced by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz for some reason. Realistically, Tyga’s run should’ve stopped right there, and then I wouldn’t have to reflect on all of the awful choices he has made in the years since in an effort to justify how he can now claim two of the best songs of the summer. I still can’t stand Tyga, and I look forward to the day he falls back into the shadows, as he always does. But for now, I give in. I’ll keep running back these Tyga songs, because, as a certain man once said, “It’s art, man.”