There’s really no song on Wolf, Tyler, the Creator’s second studio album, that stands alone the same way most do on his previous album Goblin. Nothing transfixes quite like “Yonkers” or “Sandwiches”; Wolf may be thematically inspired by a summer at Tyler’s imagined Camp Flognaw, but the instrumentals provide the soundtrack of a summer sun felt through a cold sweat more than the woozy womp of “Analog,” which still takes the dystopian summer jam crown.
Still, look to Wolf‘s “Rusty” for its significance in the narrative beginning with that Jimmy Fallon performance. Tyler still commands the most attention, but cohorts Domo Genesis and Earl Sweatshirt give him a run for his money, with the former doing so literally in the song’s chorus: “Summer, fall, wintertime / 24, 365 / You n****s gone give me mine.”
It was on his last album’s “Goblin” that Tyler wished he could share his newfound success with Earl Sweatshirt, who at the time living at a Samoan troubled youth retreat, an absence that at first resembled some sort of musical exile. Their reunion on Wolf doesn’t disappoint, and the two build off each other’s energy until a manic Tyler prematurely silences Earl with a few gunshots, ending the song but signaling the start of one of rap’s most promising collaborators.
Runner-up: “IFHY,” a love letter penned in Tyler’s special brand of honesty and endearing menace — this time with Pharrell.