Enfant terrible Tyler, The Creator puts down an unprecedented show in Ziggo Dome

In a sweat and fire -smelling Ziggo Dome, the audience starts to argue halfway through Tyler’s show, The Creator. The raping all -rounder from LA, who is playing plates on a small stage in the middle of the room, believes that the right side is loosening harder than the other, on which the people on the right start to cheer. The left side of the room reacts with a loud boe-call, on which the right-hand side starts spontaneously in the speaking choir ‘It is quiet across the street’. Tyler looks at it in surprise, looks from left to right and then starts to laugh, after which he shouts with that characteristic grating voice: « Is that how you argue in the Netherlands? Hahaha, well, better than in America, you will be shot. »

Then the stage rises, and the room is full of pumping enthusiastic young people (and parents) in a moshpit at ‘Who that Boy’. That track takes thirty seconds, after which the stage sinks back and the room at the sultry R&B number Wusyaname turns into a small theater while the light turns softly orange. In the meantime, Tyler has crawled into the air bridge that connects the small stage with the main stage for the tough Marching Song ‘Thought I was dead’ of his latest album Chromakopia. Under roasting fireworks and a hard bass that rolls through the room deafening, he sinks theatrical, and starts an a-capella version of the vulnerable song about his absent father, « Like Him, » which ends in fireworks and a maniacal barking: « I don’t look like him!« 

It is Tyler Gregory Okonma (34) in full. He is working on the world tour of Chromakopiathis is the first of two shows in Amsterdam. Of Chromakopia Made the former enfant terrible an album that can be called a true musical and literary artwork. It was therefore to be expected that this show would be special. And yet that someone without a band and without background dancers, with a microphone and some fireworks, can put down such a dramaturgically throbbing show, despite the very large amount of tracks, is unprecedented.

Living room

The decor consists of five stacked, bright green sea containers. Sprayed the word ‘chromakopia’ on it. At opening track ‘St. Chroma ‘(Tyler’s alter ego on the album) slowly slide up the containers. The entire room stamps on the beat. While marching there is Tyler, in that characteristic Chroma-Outfit: huge shoulder fillings on his green army jacket, raised the hair in a Mohawk and then that alienating mask.

The highlight is the Intermezzo, when a real living room drops from the ceiling in the middle of the room, with screens around it on which the outer walls of a cozy house are projected. Tyler sits inside a couch, with a fire, a rug, a piano and a record player in the middle. As if he wants to show his paranoia: he inside, busy with music, outside the audience, the people who want to look inside. In the corner a camera is aimed at the record box.

There he goes through his old plates, occasionally hangs on a few. The audience reacts crazy with every album it recognizes it. Among other things, he runs the hits ‘Igor’s Theme’, ‘Earfquake’ and ‘Thank You’. In the meantime, he can change clothes and returns as his ‘normal’ self: hat, white t-shirt, shirt with short sleeves. On his lounge sofa he makes a breath of fresh air. The audience asks which shoes he needs to wear. Sit down, lie down, and listens to the audience. Then he says to the right side of the audience that they are crazy, and to the people on the left that they should not shuffle on the right. They just have to do their best better. During the rest of the concert it was certainly not a quiet for a moment.

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