With four years passing since the publication of A N N I V E R S A R Y, and a mixtape released exclusively on SoundCloud labeled Tiller Tuesdays, Bryson Tiller has dropped his self-titled project.
The 19-track LP, Bryson Tiller, was released on all streaming platforms April 5th, with production from D’Mile, Charlie Heat, Bryson Tiller himself, and many others, through RCA Records.
With a technological scientist theme surrounding it, the self-titled album explores the different stages of love, along with the mixing and testing of genres such as hip-hop, R&B, pop, dancehall, drill, and more.
“I felt like now is the time to just show people what I’m capable of. There’s a lot of different types of music on this album. I wanted to show where I could go with it if I chose to,” Tiller said in an interview with Complex.
The album had three intro single releases before its entirety release: “Outside” released on September 8, 2022, “Whatever She Wants” released in November of 2023, and “CALYPSO” released on March 18, 2024.
The album begins with the ethereal sounding interlude, “http://”. This thirty-six second interlude will make you feel like you’re floating into space with an unknown sense of direction. The way that it captivates you as it transitions to “Attention”, the first actual song on the album, causes you to check back to see if the song changed.
“Attention”, the second track on the album, explores the “love at first sight” trope as Tiller starts to go into detail about his desires. With lyrics like, “Got me so amazed and all” and “There’s no competition”, with a galaxy-like instrumental against Bryson’s smooth and soulful vocals, the song leaves you wanting more. A wave of nostalgia encompasses you, as it feels like something that would have been played in a bowling alley in the 60s, in which the song then transfers into the third song on the album, “Stay Gold”.
As “Stay Gold” begins, the sound of a boombox being stopped is projected out, confirming that sense of nostalgia from the previous song. This song examines the complications of a relationship and the unsure feeling of whether or not the relationship is one-sided or not. Bryson states that he will be standing firm on his commitment to the relationship, but is confused on whether or not his partner is on the same page as him. The R&B sound, with an infusion of rap in this song, is a surprisingly nice combination for Tiller’s voice.
In the same Complex interview, Tiller stated that he didn’t want any features on this album because he wanted it to reflect himself more than anything else. The fourth song on this project, “Persuasion”, is a fan and personal favorite, because it is the only song on the album with a feature from Victoria Monét.
This song is a perfect example of the statement, “never let them know your next move”. As the song starts, Monét sings with the intentional lingering of words, to make the listener think as though she was going to say something else. Bryson’s verses contain the theme of rapping with the same strategy that Monét uses [the lingering of words] until he starts to harmonize with her throughout the chorus. Though it was previously leaked on Soundcloud, the wordplay in this song has brought a lot of attention to it, making listeners curious of what else Monét and Tiller bring to the table with their penmanship.
Track eight, “Random Access Memory [RAM]”, was also something that took fans by surprise. Since Tiller did take an approach of multiple genres, the “jersey drill” beat and the sample from Clara La San’s TikTok hit, “In This Darkness”, the song made people take notice of his step away from his usual sound. Taking the technological theme from the album, Tiller uses the mention of things associated with technology like, JDM, CAPTCHA, CPU [Central Processing Unit], as a form of wordplay in the song. The song analyzes the need for forgetting one’s memory, but not wanting to, hence the reason for the name RAM, which involves the memory of a computer or laptop. In a way, this song reminds me of the focus concept in the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and/or Ariana Grande’s most recent album, eternal sunshine.
Expanding on his mixture of genres and delivery of vocals, Tiller incorporates a couple of ballads in this album, which I personally didn’t expect from him. Track ten, “Find My Way”, and track sixteen, “Undertow”, both go through the emotions of love and how they affect one’s being. The feeling of not wanting to love, but also not wanting to deny the very prominent feeling, is portrayed through these ballads, and having his harmonies along with complimentary instrumental, help display his emotions. In these tracks, Tiller showed fans a side of him that he didn’t really express on previous albums.
“ÆON L U S T ” and “Assume The Position” were also notable changes within this album. “ÆON L U S T” has Tiller’s normal R&B style, accompanied with a dancehall influenced instrumental, while “Assume The Position” is more of a pop-influenced song that uses wordplay from the terms that would be mentioned within law enforcement encounters. With lyrics like “Did that *** come with a registration?” and “‘Cause you’re tryna plead the fifth; Think it’s time we both approach the bench”, the song would be a little difficult to understand, unless you really pay attention to it. Though both of these songs are unfamiliar to anything that we’ve ever heard from Bryson, he made sure that we knew that he could change up his catalog.
With the album coming to a close, the critically acclaimed, “Whatever She Wants” was released initially on SoundCloud, but was brought back to the public eye, when Tiller posted a TikTok of him lip-syncing to a snippet of it. The trap infused song took over the internet with individuals creating dances and challenges to the song, and stating that he should “hurry up and drop it”. Though this song sounds nothing like the rest of the album, this statement caused “day one” fans to rebuttal, claiming that he had dropped the song before the snippet. Tiller put a hush to all of this and released it on all streaming platforms, and included it on the tracklist as a bonus song.
Overall, this album is very cohesive and well-rounded, however it took some time for it to grow on me. With my first initial listen, I didn’t \ like it, but as I replayed it and discovered the various wordplay that was used, I grew to really enjoy it.
After this album, fans can expect a musical break from Tiller. In the same Complex interview as mentioned earlier, and on his Instagram, “Don’t” singer expressed that he plans to take a hiatus from music to focus on developing his video game, and to become closer to his daughters.
“My oldest daughter is 10 years old now, and I’m tired of telling her that I have to work, or have to be in the studio and make an album, before we can hang out,” Tiller said. “I just want to take a hiatus because my No. 1 passion is video games.— I’ve been designing a game for the past three years.”
Even though he is taking a hiatus after this era, he does still plan to tour and experience this project to its full potential, saying, “Obviously I’m going to go out and touch the people, see the world, and tour as much as I can.”
Despite Tiller receiving a lot of criticism and backlash within the industry, he used that feeling of doubt and frustration to help tap into sounds and production that he has never released before. His tour, The Bryson Tiller Tour, will start on May 11, 2024 in Portland, Oregon, with special guest, DJ Nitrane and his SoundCloud name, Slum Tiller.