This post was originally published on this site.
Tyga has Pitchfork trending again after the outlet handed his new $TARFACE album a merciless 0.0 score on Wednesday.
Critic Drew Millard treated the project as more than weak music, calling it a bleak warning about artificial intelligence replacing human creativity.
“The rapper’s slop-pop concept album is smug and complacent and depressing. Its very existence has made the world a worse place,” the review declared.
Millard celebrated the rare score on X, writing, “Thanks to @pitchfork for letting me write their first 0.0 review in 19 years. All I can say is: Tyga, you really earned it.”
Tyga released $TARFACE on July 31 as an ’80s-inspired concept album built around a separate pop-star character modeled partly on Scarface.
“I just feel like there’s no rules anymore. You don’t have to put yourself in a box on what things have to be creatively,” Tyga told People.
Tyga confirmed that artificial intelligence helped make some instrumentals, while maintaining that every lyric and vocal was his.
AllHipHop previously covered that admission after Tyga compared the technology with Auto-Tune during an interview about his recording process.
“If you like it, you like it; if you don’t, you don’t. I don’t care. It’s supposed to give you an experience and a feeling,” Tyga said.
Pitchfork argued the result sounded hollow and derivative, attacking the album’s synthetic accents, strained singing and attempts to imitate several 1980s icons.
The earlier uproar centered on Chris Brown’s BROWN, which Pitchfork reviewed May 12 before promoting the link again through X on August 2.
“This album is still a real p############,” Pitchfork wrote.
The August follow-up passed 16,000 likes while reviving a review that originally carried a 1.3 score.
Pierre asked, “This album is a real p############. Why even write about it?” before arguing that silence helped Brown control his redemption narrative.
Brown answered through Instagram with his own blunt dismissal: “If you not my fan, I don’t want you to listen to my s###. Go listen to m###########’ Zara Larsson or somebody.”
The outlet’s 2021 score history identified the compilation This Is Next, reviewed in August 2007, as its previous album, which received a zero.
Tyga plans intimate $TARFACE pop-up shows in New York and Los Angeles, although he has not announced dates.
