Sequels are normally horrible. In my opinion, most of the time a sequel is just riding the success of the first edition and hoping it will make the company money. When there is an amazing production that gathers a lot of attention, it’s hard to beat it or match it.

After its June 25, 2021, debut, “Call Me If You Get Lost,” Tyler, the Creator’s album, won a Grammy for being the best rap album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

So when he announced that he would be releasing “Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale,” my immediate thought was that he was riding the success of the first version. The 2021 album featured the song “WUSYNAME” which hit number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the highest-charting song from “Call Me If You Get Lost.” Because this song is featured on the deluxe album, and because of the fame of the previous album, I thought he would be milking the fame earned from the last album.

I have never been so wrong.

This album is a deluxe version of the original “Call Me If You Get Lost,” featuring eight songs that didn’t make the final cut for the 2021 album. The first song that Tyler released from this new album is “Dogtooth,” which came with a self-directed music video that he released on Twitter.

When Tyler, the Creator, released “Dogtooth,” many fans were quick to see the connections and parallels between his lyrics, his life and his past songs.

In “Dogtooth,” he raps, “If you don’t know my grandma name, then we ain’t really dogs.” This lyric is a callback to his 2013 song “Lone,” which says, “Grandmother died, didn’t cry, not a tear/Not gonna lie, f—–g weird, no water dripped out the eye/But when I got the news, yup, it left your boy stuck.”

By creating lyrics such as these that relate to each other, Tyler has managed to create a universe inside of his own music, letting fans in on his own life only through the first song he released on the album.

In my opinion, Tyler, the Creator’s, flow in this song and others on the album is seamless– the beat in the song is energetic but not inappropriate for the heavy themes of the song– such as women being promiscuous in hopes of social climbing in Hollywood.

Including “Dogtooth,” Tyler currently has three songs on the Billboard Hot 100– the others being “WHARF TALK” (feat. A$AP Rocky) and “SORRY NOT SORRY.”

“WHARF TALK” discusses a love interest that Tyler wants to whisk away—the whole song is an invitation from Tyler and A$AP Rocky to go on a romantic boat. Tyler often has dark themes and lyrics in his music, but this song is suggesting that life is too short to not have fun in the moment.

“SORRY NOT SORRY” is quite literally Tyler apologizing to a long list of people. While he is saying sorry to everyone, the music is very soft, when the music gets more aggressive, so do the rapping and lyrics.

The music in this song flows between fun and upbeat and negative and more aggressive music, during these music changes, the lyrics go from apologizing to more cynical, violent lyrics.

One of the more aggressive lyrics is “Let me see y’all hit a stage (no, y’all can’t do it)/Let me see y’all write a page (y’all not gon’ do it)/Let me see you make a decision I made/And claim that I don’t know about minimum wage or Section 8.”

Tyler is saying here that while he may have made some bad decisions, he has had a lot of pressure growing up impoverished. He is saying that he tried to make the best choices he could out of the bad opportunities he had.

While he is apologetic towards people he’s hurt, he also wants people to recognize that he has had to go through hard times. Tyler the Creator, despite his many, many accomplishments, grew up with a single mother living in poverty–the Section 8 line is yet another example of how he likes to create a universe about his life with his music for his fans to understand.

“SORRY NOT SORRY,” is the last song on the album which allows the fans to understand his struggles growing up while being bisexual, African American and impoverished. This is another example of how Tyler, the Creator, uses his music to explain the world he’s in and his struggles.

Overall, the release of the album “Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale” was perfectly curated to allow fans to relate closer to Tyler, the Creator, while talking about important themes and lessons, and simultaneously having the instrumental aspect of the music be amazing.

So while I said sequels are normally terrible, Tyler has taken it upon himself to smash that stereotype. He didn’t ride the success of the first album – he used the same themes and concepts to make it better. While I said it’s normally hard to beat or match the success of the originals, Tyler has.