Audacious and experimental Flower Boy Tyler, The Creator released his fifth studio album IGOR last week. The “Tyler” wave suddenly swept across the States. As one of the tracks in new album IGOR, the new avant-garde video of “EARFQUAKE” featuring American comedian Tracee Ellis Ross achieved 10 million hits in a week.

IGOR is a self-dialogue of narrating an inconclusive relationship, which is not only confined to romance. Tyler details complicated emotions with multiple and changeable layers in the new album. “EARFQUAKE” features vocals from legendary R&B singer Charlie Wilson and ad-libs from “mumble” rapper Playboi Carti, which serves as the emotional base of the whole album.

According to Stereogum, Tyler debuted the story of “EARFQUAKE” in the live stream L.A. performance of IGOR partnered with Apple Music. The song was first handed to Justin Bieber without any replies, then it was also turned down by pop icon Rihanna. With that, Tyler still believed it would be a “big” one and decided to put the song in his own album. This is the birth of “EARFQUAKE” in IGOR.

“I made ‘EARFQUAKE’ like May of 2017 and I wrote it for Bieber. He didn’t take it, so I hit Rihanna people up. I was like ‘Hey, I have this song, I would love for her to sing the hook, I think it will be big.’ I just wanna write pop songs, honestly. I didn’t hear back from them, so I left my reference vocals in.”

He also shared the story behind making “I THINK”, which is a song starting from finding club music inspiration with Frank Ocean and Solange. Three of them flew to Italy for learning more clubs music but ended up making “I THINK”. Solange also features vocal appearance in this song. As for the other track, “RUNNING OUT OF TIME”, Tyler claimed that the song was recorded with A$AP Ferg while he was performing in Apple Music live stream. Check out the performance below.

Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado