The Pop Corporation

We’re not entirely sure who listens to Tyga these days. Sure, ‘Rack City’ rode the wave of DJ Mustard beats when it came out, but now, we’re not really sure where he lands. He was briefly better known for dating one of the Kardashian clan, and the less said about that the better.

See, he’s got some streaming numbers and has maintained some sort of career, but now he’s pivoting to some ’80s vapor-pop star thing, called ‘Starface’, but of course, the ‘S’ is stylised with a dollar sign, because in 2026, it is still somehow all about the Benjamins.

Hip hop and it’s offshoots have been navigating tricky waters recently, what with the conspicuous spending and luxury looking very tasteless in an American which is hyper fixated on wealth disparity. Some of it manages to land, being a pleasant distraction from the daily grind, while some it looks cack-handed and, worse still, old-fashioned. Are we still listening to people tell us how lonely it is at the top, from a video shot on a luxury yacht we’re all hoping will sink?

With that in mind, you can give vague praise to Tyga for trying something different. However, he does so on the back of some comments that show how tone deaf the wealthy have become of late. While this man can absolutely afford to pay some musicians, he’s said “I don’t care” about the criticisms that he’s used A.I. on this new record.

He said: “We definitely used AI – and I know people are going to be mad about me saying this, but it’s where technology is going. It’s no different than when Auto-Tune came out. Some people were opposed to it, but real artists took it and used it.”

“I’ve never spoken on this with anybody because I always felt like it’s similar to a magician explaining how he does his tricks – like why are people over-explaining how they make shit that’s good? 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.”

With all that in mind, it is incredibly tempting to just repeatedly dunk on this album as a point of principal. Who cares, right? Thats the whole shrug Tyga has offered this new body of work up with and, if he’s not necessarily written everything on this, he can’t get mad if we say it’s shit. It’s tempting to point out how cheap labour yields crappy results without even listening to a second of this album, but we owe it to ourselves to not only challenge our preconceptions, but also to see if there’s a route through the artificial intelligence to see what the future of music might look like.

It’s almost a shame these questions are being asked all over an album from Tyga, isn’t it? Like, who is he these days?

Obviously, all this thought isn’t matched by what’s gone into this album – fact is, that is does sound outsourced. It sounds hobbled together by someone who hasn’t really embodied what made the ’80s disco and maximal pop of the time so great. In fact, you can almost hear how good it would have been if he’d spent some money on some sessions players of the time, and made some hot-mess of a record that traded blows with the extravagance of the era he’s apparently eyeing up. Almost. It all feels a bit ‘I like some Michael Jackson songs’ if pushed, not, ‘I understand what drove the likes of Cameo and Prince to make the records they made.’

Fact is, the furore around the use of A.I. and Tyga being thoroughly unfazed by any criticisms of it has become a sideshow to this LP – fact is, whether he used it or not, it stinks perfectly well all by itself.

His singing voice is incredibly plain and thin, and the melodies are even thinner. Like, it’s not as if people aren’t into blazing neon ’80s infused R&B pop is it? The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ is one of the biggest songs ever released, and further down the food chain, someone like Nef The Pharaoh managed to couple Southern Rap and ’80s Boogie to great effect, so this album is just squarely on Tyga. It’s just bad.

‘Powdered Dreams’ is mildly lively, but the production is as shallow as it gets and lacks any of the dynamism of the source material either he or his A.I. prompts can muster. What’s so frustrating is how it’s neither DIY enough to sound like a fun street mixtape, nor glossy enough to just get carried along. Neither is it video-gamey enough, missing all the rubbery 8-Bit funk of old Amiga games, or whatever. It’s so neither here-nor-there, that it all feels like it just needs more work, more focus, or dare we say it, better drugs.

And given that this is a character about a movie he’s apparently working on about a cocaine runner who loses everything, this isn’t exactly a bad idea – it’s just a really boring, shitty album.

Effectively, for a thing like this to work, it isn’t simply enough to do it – you have to embody it. You can well imagine Tyga is a party boy, you can imagine he enjoys a Ferrari Testarossa and may well enjoy the movies set in the decadent ’80s and the fall from grace of an anti-hero – but we’re not picking it up here. It needs to pour out of you, like coke sweats – there needs to be ruefulness in your voice or bullish defiance; Tyga just sounds like someone who vaguely likes the aesthetic and is playing dress-up.

That would be fine if the music was better, but it isn’t. Artificial intelligence or not, this is a thin project that may well get propped up by his fanbase and some clever bot work online, but for people looking for an artist who has taken a fun left turn, you’re better off looking elsewhere.