New Magic Wand: Killing for Love
By: Julia Pintar
Tags: Rap, Tyler The Creator, Igor, Love, Music

Tyler the Creator’s IGOR begins as a textbook love story. Beginning on a high, professing his love for an unnamed man, the first half of the album emphasizes the overwhelming emotions Tyler has for his romantic interest. However, a gradual shift in tone throughout the album begins. Soon, his strong feelings about love transition to an alarming call to action for violence as he falls off his high, realizing the man he loves may be slipping from his grasp. A new sense of anxiety becomes prevalent in the fifth song on the album, “RUNNING OUT OF TIME.” Tyler’s emotional expression quickly switches from thrilled to be in love, to fearful of losing his love to someone else. By the time the instrumentals fade out on “RUNNING OUT OF TIME” and “NEW MAGIC WAND” slowly comes in, Tyler has already lost his race. What was once just the two of the men turns into a dangerous love triangle with the introduction of a woman that his love interest is now with. Immediately, Tyler’s focus shifts from profusely confessing his love, to finding a way to end up with the man he loves regardless if he is in a relationship or not. After he learns about the girl in “RUNNING OUT OF TIME,” he introduces the idea of violence in “NEW MAGIC WAND.” Tyler begins to exhibit a deadly desperation as his mission for the pursuit of love continues: a murderous quest to get his love interest to himself once again.

Tyler first displays this tone shift in the chorus by changing instrumentals and emphasizing different lyrics to display a powerful switch in his mind from the beginning to the end of the chorus. Overrun with the repeated, “Please don’t leave me now” phrase, the first part of the chorus boasts a pleaful sadness and gives transparency to the overwhelming importance the relationship bears on Tyler. With each repetition of the phrase, the chorus becomes less monotone, adding louder instrumentals and adlibs. As the chorus continues, a new phrase takes over the familiar repetition. Tyler reduces the autotune from his voice as he comes in with this new line, “Like magic, like magic, like magic, gone” (20). As the thought screams at him within his own mind, he turns up the volume of the line in the song as well, almost as if this line lays atop the others. Thus, getting rid of the girl, “like magic,” becomes more important to Tyler than the man not leaving him. He earns a new fixation, his obsession switches from preserving his relationship to solely eliminating the girl from both of their lives. She is seen as a blatant obstacle, without her there he can be reunited with the man he seeks: their love much more achievable with her out of the picture.

As Tyler continues to add new layers to the chorus, they seemingly sound more and more human by loosening up the autotune as each line gets more sinister. The adlibs change from “Don’t leave” (16) to “I can make her leave” (21). Although subtle, it becomes obvious through a larger emphasis on the second phrase that his new goal is to get rid of the girl, removing his focus from between himself and the other man to a streamlined focus of eradicating the girl. Towards the very end of the chorus, the “ea” sound of “leave” is held onto while the other lines prevail, exaggerating the importance Tyler feels to physically make the girl “leave.” This sound is strung along with the rest of the chorus, again seemingly riding on top of the other lines, making it the most emphasized part, the most important idea. With such a concentration on making the girl “leave,” Tyler suggests his best way to do that, “new magic, new magic, new magic wand,” (17) he repeats twice. With this line specifically, the autotune is incredibly weakened off of his voice. The bluntness of this line, suggesting a “magic wand,” a gun, to rid of the girl presents an interesting vulnerability. Now that listeners can hear Tyler’s true voice without the help of autotune, they understand his sincere ideas. Looking back at the previous lines where autotune was prevalent, it can be suggested that Tyler was hiding behind his autotune. He was filtering out and blocking his true emotions, but now that he removes autotune, he has nothing to hide behind and his truer, more murderously passionate ideas come to surface. Tyler now puts it on himself to extinguish the relationship, truly believing “[he] can make her leave” with whatever means necessary. In this case, he resorts to a “magic wand,” a gun. Tyler teases the idea of explicit violence in this chorus, allowing the listeners to know that his “magic wand” is “new,” it’s an item he got for one specific reason: to get the girl out of the picture. As the lyrics and autotune display a tone shift, Tyler foreshadows more dangerous ideas to come, essentially using this portion of the song as a build-up and introduction to the evil thoughts and actions he can hold in his mind while his obsession continues.

If the chorus was a look into Tyler’s true feelings, the third verse goes directly inside his mind to lay out his purest thoughts. In the chorus, although aided with the help of reducing autotune, Tyler’s voice was masked through various adlibs and competing instrumentals. Although it continues to have background instrumentals and adlibs, Tyler’s voice is the main focus in the third verse as it meshes nicely with the previous “ea” sound brought along the chorus, continuing to emphasize making the girl leave. Giving himself the platform for authenticity, Tyler almost screams at the audience in the powerful four lines the verse holds. Directly following the chorus, the third verse jolts the listener through increased aggression and volume within the vocals, giving an elevation to the verse and the words it holds. Tyler no longer hints at his ideas with his “magic wand.” The larger focus on his voice rather than on instrumentals and adlibs give him the opportunity to be ridiculously upfront with his plans to get rid of the girl. What was once a slight hint at murder in the chorus becomes an apparent death threat in the third verse, “She’s gonna be dead, I just got a magic wand/We can finally be together” (29–30). The “magic wand” in Tyler’s lyrical work serves as both the idea of magically taking this girl away from his love interest, as well as the weapon to do so. Tyler is finally fed up with hiding his true feeling behind either autotune or excessive instrumentals and adlibs. The intensity in which he shares his true emotions is reflected in the obscenity of his ideas. As the lyrics scream at the listener, the meaning of the words do the same. The idea of murder is such a loud one that it’s unable to be ignored, just as Tyler’s love for this man can’t be ignored. Fogged by romance, Tyler believes that killing the girl will reunite him and the man of his dreams: an ode to the power of love.

To continue the theme of lyrical transparency, Tyler brings a new definition to strong emotions in the fourth verse. A fifteen-second intermission full only of instrumentals that resemble both gunshots and a ticking clock count down to something. Specifically, it counts down to the fourth verse, an eruption of anger. Anticipation is built up in this short intermission, cueing listeners into the idea that something big is about to happen. The entire song slowly works up to a substantial display of emotion. As the countdown abruptly ends, Tyler’s voice comes in louder and more intense than ever before. Synthesizers overwhelm the listener to match the intensity of his lyrics. Immediately, listeners’ ears are blasted with what seems like all of the sound previously in the song, all at once. Tyler has one final transition in his ideas. Initially, as seen in the chorus, his immediate attention was focused on just the other man. Then, as his ideas became more frightful, his focus was on eliminating the girl from his lover’s life. Now, as his anger is rising even closer to the surface, he rejects the idea of just choosing to get the girl out of both of their lives. The relationship his lover had with the girl has gone on so long he can no longer forgive his ex-boyfriend for choosing the girl over him. Instead of his initial plan of only killing the girl, Tyler changes his mind to destroy all that encompasses this past relationship, “Blow the whole spot up,” (50) he threatens. What once was killing for love turned into killing because of love. Tyler was so incredibly overwhelmed with the draining emotions that encompass loving someone and watching them choose someone else over you. Instead of moving on solitarily, Tyler would rather kill everyone involved: like it never even happened in the first place. This verse is truly an explosion of emotion, a display of raw pain that is shown through dreams of violence. Whether Tyler actually wants to kill the people who have hurt him or just chooses to use violence for an intriguing commentary on how powerful love is, his work shows that passion can be dangerously manipulative to a person’s emotions and reason.

Looking through a lens that allows listeners to analyze “NEW MAGIC WAND” as a commentary for a much bigger discussion on love, it is easy to relate the exuberant violence Tyler threatens to the intense feelings one often feels in the process of love. Tyler the Creator first came out as queer in his 2017 album Flower Boy. IGOR was his project that followed directly after coming out to his fans through music, and it serves as a piece where he can fully be himself. Tyler uses physical means, like murder, to get across the extraordinary emotions that are sparked from his relationship, or many relationships from the past. Already a minority as a black man, coming out as queer brings another level to the intersectional oppression Tyler faces in his daily life. IGOR tells listeners how difficult it was for Tyler to wait to be open with his fans. It caused him to feel emotions so strong there was no choice but to compare them to physical actions. “NEW MAGIC WAND” was the small explosion Tyler’s storyline had for a specific relationship, but IGOR was the much bigger burst of emotion in terms of the storyline of Tyler’s overall life.