Tyler, The Creator has had one of hip-hop’s most impressive evolutions ever. Those who saw his 2020 Grammy night performance of "Earfquake" and "New Magic Wand" could have hardly predicted such a gaudy, show-stopping display when the L.A.-based rapper jumped onto the scene with 2009’s Bastard. The debut mixtape, which was released on Christmas day that year, was a compilation of music from the previous two years of his career as a leading figure of the Odd Future movement.

The project is a polarizing effort filled with shock-inducing lyrics that at one point had the artist, who's also a producer, banned from the U.K. in 2015. His manager Chris Clancy claimed that a letter from the U.K.’s Secretary of State for the Home Department accused Tyler’s music of “encouraging violence and intolerance of homosexuality.” Little would they know, Tyler, who at one point was so incendiary that Eminem sent him a letter of thanks, would become a beacon of the exact opposite with his 2017 album Flower Boy.

On Flower Boy songs like “See You Again” with Kali Uchis, “Garden Shed” featuring Estelle and “I Ain’t Got Time!,” he speaks candidly about romantic feelings for other men. The frank lyrics may have been surprising to some, but others applauded him for being a prominent act owning his sexuality in a notoriously homophobic genre. That liberating project represents a new sonic plateau for the 28-year-old artist, who had evolved from a rapper who loved to repulse into one that evoked so many other positive emotions.

At the 2018 Grammy Awards, Tyler didn’t receive a Best Rap Album win for Flower Boy (like he thought he deserved), but he did got the nod in 2020 with IGOR, a kaleidoscopic genre fusion that demonstrated Tyler at his best. In 2018, he told GQ Style that he felt only “some” of his previous work “aged well.” What aged the best? Where do his albums stack up? Take a look below.

See Every Tyler, The Creator Project Ranked

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