A Deep Dive into Tyler, The Creator's Disturbing "WOLF TRILOGY"

Bonus mention: Doctor TC= Tyler's Conscience= Tron Cat. Tyler is a genius

Something that I noticed… At the end of Yonkers, Dr. TC says “fuck everything man” and Tyler said “that’s what my conscious said”, which also foreshadows the ending of the trilogy

Love or hate these albums, you gotta admit Tyler has crazy talent of telling a story through songs

it’s wild that all these alter egos showcased separate parts of himself. The Wolf trilogy showcased his anger, sorrow, trauma, and sickness. Cherry Bomb showed his curiosity and daring creativity. Flowerboy and Igor showed his true feelings and desires. Call Me If You Get Lost shows his confidence. And SORRY NOT SORRY is him killing off these separate entities after becoming himself, as the exploration of his inner mind is in the past.

Many people think that this Tyler is “bad,” but I honestly think this stuff is as essential to his personality as the lighter subject matter on CMIYGL. Everyone has a light side and a dark side, and Tyler has shown that his talent resides in both.

I think something you should have brought up was the color thing on goblin. On the deluxe version of the album the text is purple which is a combination of red and blue, mashing both personalities of Wolf and Ace. Anyways, this is a really good video

Tyler is honestly a genius. I literally love when artists do this, it makes the albums even better!!

It just goes to show you how much time he took to organize this whole trilogy, so clever and one of the best ever to do it

His growth from Bastard to Wolf is absolutely amazing. Especially his musicality.

I feel like the songs in between the trilogy are like a commercial break, like Tamale, Parking Lot and Slater are like an ad to take your mind off the situation for a second, but that’s what I think 😭

Something I LOVE about the whole “Today, Tomorrow, The Next Day” Concept is how we can still see it in Tyler’s later albums. I like how Tyler doesn’t immediately become a good guy, who only does good deeds and is untouched by his past because that would be unrealistic. Even though.. the trilogy isn’t exactly down to Earth🧍. Anyways, for the sake of this comment, I’m just gonna focus on the motif of love in Tyler’s music. TL;DR: Tyler’s journey continues even after flowerboy, he’s still growing as a person and that’s okay I’m bad at getting to the point idk Flowerboy is how Tyler comes out to his audience, and explores relationships, queerness, loneliness.. honestly just life. This is such a big step for Tyler, especially when compared to his earlier albums and the confusion between lust and brutality. Tyler is coping, BUT we still see that he is not perfect. He’s moved on from fantasizing about murder, but he still obsesses over the men who lead him on in IGOR. In New Magic Wand, he shows anger and possession that’s similar to IFHY. He cares for the man he’s chasing, but only because he wants the outcome to be them together. In What’s Good, we see him more pressed and deeming himself as irreplaceable, similar to the feelings in Wolf. And I Don’t Love You Anymore can be a sad statement on giving up as Igor attempts to find self worth again. In both I Think and Boyfriend, Tyler’s feelings are parallel to the ones shown in Awkward. But the relationship isn’t pursued because of a mutual feeling. Instead it is because the nature of feeling is new. It isn’t from the want to rebel or deviate(like in Bastard), or because he doesn’t care, or because he confused the two together. The feeling seems new, but it’s still just an infatuation. He was told there was a connection(by the man) and, to Igor, it was something pure. But because he is still flawed—and because of being used in a vulnerable state— his self destructive habits resurface. So he obsesses, begs, gets angry and continues the cycle until something new comes along. That new would be CMIYGL. By now, Tyler is successful, but still with many regrets. He meets new people, some of it brief and some of it genuine but at the wrong moment. By now, Tyler expected to have healed from the immature and damaging views he had on love. He doesn’t expect anything serious, until there is. This comment is already long as hell so I’m only gonna use one song as an example, and I think Wilshire is perfect for it. The relationship we hear about in this song feels real, pulls the listener in— because it IS real and is told by Tyler himself without any alter-ego in the frontlines. A few important lines to note: “I thought I was bulletproof She proved me wrong, man I felt 200 percent with her It was beautiful I was able to feel But it was, it was bad timing” Obviously, his love life would seem like a story to me. But even with just a bit of the realness in this album, we can tell Tyler is working to be genuine and plans on only doing so. Though Tyler couldn’t keep the happiness he found, he was still able to have it without any malice. We’ve moved on from his ulterior egos, and now with CMIYGL:Estate Sale we’re just getting Tyler as he shows more passion in his works and pursues his own aspirations, encouraging us to do the same. I wanted to mention Cherry Bomb, but atp I should just make my own video lol If you read all of this, thanks<3 EDIT: I see the replies and I do plan on making videos again BUT im super busy with graduating HS right now so bare with me 😭

in IFHY when tyler, as samuel says that he “even considered picking up smoking” could be a reference to when he is teased for not smoking any of the weed, which he wouldn’t do for the people encouraging him to, but he really loves salem and that he is willing to destroy himself for salem, and that all he wanted was the best, but he has no idea how to handle a healthy and normal relationship, he only knows to destroy. whether it’s himself or if it’s wolf haley, he will do whatever it takes, just not in a healthy way.

that fucking shocked me, as a tyler fan who didn’t really follow up with the story (except in igor) that was fucking crazy. this video was great, thanks for making this video. it’s well cut down and displayed

One little crazy thing about this trilogy is , is when Earl was killed in WOLF . He never did a song with Tyler again irl . Man these albums weighed heavy on me for years

42:03 - Tyler doesn't actually hate Yonkers. He hated how everyone only cared about Yonkers when he made other great songs too.

This was literally one of the best youtube videos i have ever watched especially as a Tyler fan. You could deadass make a movie based on the narratives and messages within this trilogy alone. I will definitely have a different perspective listening to these albums in the future, and never realized how much depth Tyler’s earlier projects had to begin with.

In my opinion, I think Cowboy is more centered around Samuel. At the end of the song it mentions how Samuel's girlfriend, Salem is introduced, which Wolf doesn't know until now. The song also implies how Samuel is more of a loner, someone that doesn't really have care for anyone out of his mind, a cowboy. It also says "You know how weird it is knowing I make a bunch of cheese" which connects to how Samuel makes money by drug dealing in 48. We also don't know clearly who Wolf's friends are & his occupation other than making music which I can predict isn't so famous if you exclude Colossus since nobody verbally calls out "Oh, that's Wolf Haley, he makes music." or something similar to that. (I also think Wolf and Tyler aren't the same person, and that Colossus is more of just a Tyler experience and not related to the Wolf-Storyline.) So in my visual, I mainly see Samuel expressing himself in Cowboy more than Wolf. I also think that when the song says "I am the cowboy of my own trip" is how Samuel feels traveling and visiting people to make drug deals, but this is still a very amazing review !

This was by far the best video covering the trilogy, they are great albums with a story and message that most people skip over because of lyrical content. Something maybe you could have slipped in the end is that in the song ‘sam(is dead) of the of tape vol 2, Tyler kills off all his alter egos, therefore going into the next day. The music video also shows this. Maybe I can see why you left it out tho because it’s not part of the official trilogy but it’s a decent story piece to include. Also there is the analog part 2 which is just another flashback to wolf with Salem

If we take the Wolf trilogy a bit literally with the whole "alter ego" stuff and interpret this as a story about a man with DID, it makes a very interesting story: -There's 4 alters: Tyler, Wolf, Ace and TronCat/Dr TC -The main story of the trilogy is TC doing an intervention on the system, focusing on Tyler, the host, so that they can better manage their music career. -In Bastard, it's all about TC getting Tyler to understand Ace's behaviours and why he thinks all those horrible things. Tyler at the end manages to get some control over Ace and gets him to be in the background for now. -Wolf is, well, about wolf taking the lead in his social life while Tyler either takes a break or focuses on his music. The album is a dramatization of both Wolf's life at the moment and Tyler's fear of Ace getting out of control again and how this could get them killed, representing Ace as Sam in the album. This stablishes Tyler's fear and hatred of Ace, meaning he didnt learn the intended lesson TC was trying to teach him. After some chaos in Wolf's life, the system goes back to intervention time. -Goblin is the conclussion of everything. After whatever issues Wolf went through, he and Ace begin to fight. This is where a core concept of dissociation comes to play: Identity Alteration and Confusion. They're kinda self explanatory so i wont explain them in detail. The fight between Wolf and Ace over control over the body begin to affect Tyler, no longer being able to differentiate between his selves (this could explain TC's discrepancies in attitude, maybe Tyler confused Ace with TC) and getting those violent fantasies again, with the "killing his friends" fantasy being the breaking point. This is where TC puts a stop to everything and finally tells Tyler, Ace and Wolf the truth: at the end of the day, everybody on the system is just the same person, a fragment of the whole that, despite their differences, are just a part of the big picture and it doesnt make sense to fight eachother or deny this fact. The ending is left a bit open, and we really dont get to know if TC's statement worked. But considering the mood of the future albums by Tyler, i wanna belive that at least everybody made peace with that fact.

This was so nostalgic for me. Took me back to nights in seventh grade researching everything on genius to make sense of Tyler’s storytelling. Man this video would’ve been great to have back then 😂. I can’t believe it’s been almost ten years since goblin. Man was I an angry ass 13 year old lmaoo