It’s as if the two personas are cooking up the album in a lab together, and toiling over how much to reveal in the final performance. The tension between the two voices hints at a nagging artistic dilemma weighing up the vulnerable sincerity of ‘Flower Boy’ against the shock factor that defined the rapper’s earlier material. On ‘PUPPET’ Kanye West appears to be acting as the voice of Igor: “You lost, son, and you’ve been tryna find your way to me” he snarls, in stark contrast to Tyler’s helpless verses. For every pitched up, helpless admission on ‘RUNNING OUT OF TIME’ drenched in sincerity, Igor is the meaner, lower register counterpoint. And rather than Igor representing the person Tyler’s in love with, it seems more likely that Igor represents the angrier side of heartbreak. “My eyes are green, I eat my veggies,” goes ‘NEW MAGIC WAND, “I need to get her out the picture”. In another visual, a stage performance of ‘NEW MAGIC WAND’ pans out to reveal a five audience members watching his gig in the desert.Īt its heart, ‘Igor’ is a heartbreak album, picking up the pieces of a love interest who leaves and chooses their girlfriend instead.
The musician, sporting turquoise suit, bleach-blonde wig and sunnies, can only blurt out a nonsensical “yes”. Often, the visuals we’ve seen from ‘Igor’ examine performance: in the video for ‘EARFQUAKE’ Tracee Ellis Ross – playing a brilliantly gushing daytime telly host – says to Tyler “you are a performer, I understand. Likewise, there are two distinct voices on the record: often Tyler’s vocals are pitch-shifted into a higher register, but occasionally another distinct lower-register voice pops up. There are two clear personas on ‘Igor’ – the Andy Warhol-meets-campy-soul-singer character, and the short-haired, more serious face on the cover of the album.
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