Tyler, the Creator has released a short new song, “Lumberjack,” along with an accompanying video, which he directed under his Wolf Haley alias.
The track — which clocks in at just over a minute — opens with a lazy spoken-word bit that finds Tyler talking about plans for a snowy weekend in Utah over woozy synths. “Lumberjack” transforms when the drums kick in, and Tyler proceeds to peel off punchlines like, “Rolls Royce pull up, black boy hop out/Shout out to my mother and my father, didn’t pull out.”
The “Lumberjack” video is classic Tyler as well: A series of surreal vignettes as he reads old car magazines in bed, raps on top of a stack of suitcases, gets his nails done, and finds himself trapped in a blizzard.
“Lumberjack” marks Tyler’s second release of the year, following “Tell Me How,” which officially arrived in March, but appeared first in a Coca-Cola commercial released a month prior. At the time, “Tell Me How” marked his first proper solo release since 2019, although in the interim he collaborated with Westside Gunn, Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist, Lil Yachty, and Brent Faiyaz
Tyler, the Creator’s most recent album, the Grammy-winning Igor, was released in 2019. At the end of that year, he dropped a pair of loose singles, “Best Interest” and “Group B.”
VULTURES 2 will go down as the worst Kanye West album. It was an absolute mess in terms of its rollout. The album went over its scheduled release date by months. When it did finally arrive, the mixes were an absolute mess. Kanye West corrected them in real time. He also tweaked the tracklist, and added songs once the extremely negative feedback came rolling in. "530" is a rare bright spot on the album, though. Kanye West gets personal and delivers one of his best lyrical performances in ages over a smooth vocal chop. And now we have a music video for it.
One might assume a track as heartfelt as "530" would get a heartfelt video. Kanye West has given fans some of the most iconic and memorable hip hop visuals of the 21st century. It would stand to reason that he could whip something up for the new single that was tonally appropriate. Well, West did what he does best, and defied expectations. The music video for "530" doesn't feature Kanye West or his VULTURES collaborator, Ty Dolla $ign. It doesn't feature any human beings, actually. Instead, the video is centered around puppets and people wearing cartoon masks.
The video doesn't follow a straightforward narrative. It strings together a bunch of low quality videos of these puppets and masked people seemingly doing random activities. One scenario sees a man walking the street with a bag in hand. Another sees a female puppet get an injection into her nose. There's a very unnerving quality to the visuals here, like a Twilight Zone episode conceived by, well, Kanye West. It's a bold visual direction to take things. Lyrically, "530" is about the rapper's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian. It also touches on the way Kardashian is raising their children, and the fears West has about their futures.
The most interesting aspect of "530," barring the striking visuals, is that it received a music video this long after VULTURES 2 was released. Kanye West has not done promo for the album, and everything we have heard from him has seemingly been in preparation for his next solo release, BULLY. The rapper had seemed as though he closed the chapter on VULTURES. Now, we don't really know what to think.
