What is Tyler, the Creator creating this time? A dance floor. Tyler released his new album, Don’t Tap the Glass, with only a few hours’ warning on July 21. On his previous album, Chromakopia, released October 2024, Tyler explored new depths of himself, creating an album “at war with itself, jostling through light, uplifting moments and self-defeating lows,” per critic Craig Jenkins. Don’t Tap the Glass isn’t really into all that. Instead, Tyler wants the world to dance. The album is filled with wall-to-wall bangers, beginning with Tyler introducing a new alter ego on the album’s first track, “Big Poe,” and ending with hard-hitting, blissed-out “Tell Me What It Is.” The album’s second track, “Sugar on My Tongue,” sees Tyler sampling the iconic 2002 rap-party track “Pass the Courvoisier Part II,” by Busta Rhymes, featuring P. Diddy and Pharrell Williams. On the album’s website, and on “Big Poe,” Tyler spells out three rules: “1. Body movement. No sitting still. 2. Only speak in glory. Leave your baggage at home. 3. Don’t tap the glass.”
“Don’t tap the glass,” while typically associated with aquariums, could mean a few things in Tyler’s context. For one, Tyler might see his own celebrity as akin to a fish — they’re similarly gawked at by strangers. In another interpretation, he’s telling people to stop being on their phones. “I asked some friends why they don’t dance in public and some said because of the fear of being filmed,” Tyler said in a note posted on Instagram. “I thought damn, a natural form of expression and a certain connection they have with music is now a ghost. It made me wonder how much of our human spirit got killed because of the fear of being a meme, all for having a good time. I just got back from a ‘listening party’ for this album and man was it one of the greatest nights of my life. 300 people. No phones allowed. No cameras. Just speakers and a sweatbox. Everyone was dancing, moving, expressing, sweating. It was truly beautiful. I played the album front to back twice, it felt like that pent up energy finally got released and we craved the idea of letting more of it out. There was a freedom that filled the room. A ball of energy that might not translate to every speaker that plays this album but man did that room nail it. This album was not made for sitting still. Dancing driving running any type of movement is recommended to maybe understand the spirit of it. Only at full volume.”
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Compared to the stylized epics he released for Chromakopia, the music video for the album’s fifth track, “Stop Playing With Me,” shows Tyler avoiding overcomplication. In it, Tyler is clad head to toe in red and dances in front of two speakers. “I’ll tell them boys, ‘Hop off my dick’ / Huh, ‘You’s a funky-ass bitch,’” Tyler sings on the bridge. Now that’s something to sing along to in the club.
