I knew it was going to be good. But I hadn't expected a concert in which the Royal Arena transforms into a pop-cultural stage-shift of lights, mechanics and manic self-staging. Tyler, The Creator doesn't just play music -- he stages himself as his own main work.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
It starts with a drumming rhythm and a set of green containers that look like something Wes Anderson might have sketched in a blackout. Out of them, Tyler marches like a mangled action figure: too big a uniform, too little mask, too much attitude. The crowd howls. Not just such a concert-howl, but a decidedly startled instinct.
He fires up during “St. Chroma,” and then we're at it. It feels like a sonic rape of the arena's concrete -- in the best way imaginable. He strikes every word with surgical precision while light, fire and choreography dance around him like a budget-busting hallucination.
During “Noid,” I literally feel the sound in my ribcage -- it's the kind of bass you don't hear but live in; the audience is with you all the way. It's not a concert where the artist has to ask people to sing -- they've taken ownership from the first beat.
Suddenly, Tyler moves up a bridge that lowers down like a sort of sci-fi queen entrance. He stands up above us -- almost cheering -- and fires off “Sticky” like a siren. There's money being thrown, there's screaming, and the whole thing feels like some sort of parody of capitalism and chaos, but with no morally lifted index finger. It's just the grinning.
And then it all shifts.
In the middle of the arena, a new stage unfolds -- like an oversized pop-up bookstore. Tyler steps into it, puts a record on, and suddenly “Earfquake” hovers beyond us like a declaration of love to the audience. He barely sings himself -- he doesn't have to -- we got it. And he knows it.
From there we get a kind of Tyler retrospective in fragments: a little IGOR, a little Flowerboy, a little Goblin — all the periods blend together, and it feels like flipping through a diary he has allowed us to read on the sly.
He stops briefly in front of what looks like an old poster from his teenage years, and you sense something is at stake here. Not nostalgia, but acceptance. That time passes and that the audience has been paying attention. We are not at a distance -- we are in the transformation.
“Sweet/I Thought You Wanted to Dance” becomes a kind of funky ecstasy in the middle of it all -- a moment when it all becomes play, hips and warm glances.
And when you think it's all peaking, “Who Dat Boy” bursts in and rips up the floor. There is being moshed, screamed, pushed -- but never without control. Tyler holds us in the palm of his hand, even when he shakes us.
He ends with “I Hope You Find Your Way Home” -- quiet, beautiful, disarming. No thank-you speeches, no extra numbers. Just a man who has set our insides on fire in the best way imaginable and is now closing the door behind him.
Let's just put it like this...
This wasn't just a concert -- it was an installation. A work of art that was played in real time. A tour de force in self-control and self-surrender. I've never seen anything like it. And I've seen a lot.
