Tyler, the Creator’s “Noid” Is a Slick Black Sabbath Homage
But it's the personal touches that make the 'Chromakopia' single really work.
The blown-out opening notes of “Noid” should be familiar to legions of stoners and metalheads: They don’t sound like they’re sampled directly, but they’re clearly evocative of “War Pigs,” the immortal protest anthem that opens Black Sabbath’s 1970 album Paranoid. The resemblance could be coincidental—they’re just two adjacent notes on a fuzzy guitar, the kind of thing anyone might stumble into—but given Tyler, the Creator’s music-nerd bona fides and the fact that he called the song “Noid,” I’d bet money that it’s an intentional reference. The borrowed metal riff gives the song a rock-rap feeling that, as Dylan pointed out in our work chat this morning, might also remind you of Tyler’s longtime love of N.E.R.D.. Whether that’s good or bad comes down to your personal appetite for that kind of thing.
(Update: Pigeons and Planes has pointed out that the actual source of the sample is the Zambian rock band Ngozi Family's 1977 track Nizakupanga Ngzo, which, as other writers have pointed out, itself seems like it could be a "War Pigs" homage. In any case...)
Dylan isn’t really feeling “Noid,” but I like it. What sold me is the way the song opens up in its second section: The riff never stops, but suddenly it’s surrounded by lush jazz harmonies instead of claustrophobic dead air. Backing vocalists drift past; a synthesizer chirps and stutters like it’s sending love notes in morse code. Tyler, who once again wrote, arranged, and produced his new album Chromakopia himself, is really flexing his composition skills here. The riff's simplicity makes it adaptable to all sorts of different harmonic contexts: Tyler’s choice to work it from both angles—first as crushing minimalism, then as just one element in a pillowy larger tapestry—gives “Noid” a personal flavor that’s just as important as the genre homage to making the song work.
The lyrics—first sung through distinctly N.E.R.D.-y distortion and echo effects, then rapped—are about paranoia, as you might have guessed from the name. He’s also good at balancing personal perspective and stuff that just sounds cool in his writing. Songs with “Noid”’s outlook, which boils down to “I’m famous and now I can’t trust anyone,” are a dime a dozen in 2024, and can get tiresome quickly for those of us who don’t know what it’s like to dodge selfie-hungry fans. Smartly, Tyler avoids wallowing, and instead blows his problems out into archetypal proportions, casting himself as the harried anti-hero of a thrilling film noir. “I loop around the block, eyes glued to the rear-view,” he raps at one point. “Rather double back than regret hearing pew pew!” This is Tyler’s sweet spot: both real and slick enough to resonate, even when you can’t relate.
