{"id":6,"date":"2026-08-22T21:46:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurapulse.live\/?p=6"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:46:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:46:37","slug":"tyga-tarface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurapulse.live\/?p=6","title":{"rendered":"Tyga :: $TARFACE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/6sP5Exlpl3wK4nWnvwksQ4\">$TARFACE<\/a>\u201d album by Tyga became infamous before I even decided to review it, and I\u2019ll get into the reasons why in just a moment. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to track Tyga\u2019s review scores dating back to his debut LP \u2014 after all <a href=\"https:\/\/RapReviews.com\/\">RapReviews<\/a> has been with him for his entire career. He made a decent if not overwhelming start with \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2008\/07\/tyga-no-introduction\/\">No Introduction<\/a>,\u201d scoring 6 out of 10 overall. He rose to a career high 7 with his sophomore album \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2012\/02\/tyga-careless-world-rise-of-the-last-king\/\">Careless World<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s been downhill ever since. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2013\/04\/tyga-hotel-california\/\">Hotel California<\/a>\u201d got a 5. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2017\/08\/tyga-bitch-im-the-s-t-2\/\">Bitch I\u2019m the Shit 2<\/a>\u201d got a 3. There was a brief reversal in 2019 for \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2019\/06\/tyga-legendary\/\">Legendary<\/a>\u201d where he got back to 6 largely due to the album\u2019s production, but \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2025\/02\/tyga-nsfw\/\">NSFW<\/a>\u201d returned to the backward slide. Throughout all this the scores for Tyga\u2019s lyrical efforts have been plunging even faster, landing at a miserable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rapreviews.com\/2025\/02\/tyga-nsfw\/\">3 out of 10<\/a> for last year\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"cb-video-frame\">\n<div class=\"fluid-width-video-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"fitvid0\" title=\"$TARFACE, Tyga - WHITE GRAINS (Official Visualizer)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oFBE2HC1FgI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>And with that introduction out of the way I\u2019m happy to reveal why \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/6sP5Exlpl3wK4nWnvwksQ4\">$TARFACE<\/a>\u201d has been controversial since its release on July 31st. Rather than try to improve his writing process to not make such banal, monotonous tracks, Tyga gave up all pretense of trying and farmed the work out to AI. Initially this was just an accusation levied by reviewers in response to how artificial the music sounded, until <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibe.com\/features\/editorial\/tyga-starface-album-used-ai-as-a-tool-1235182068\/\">Tyga actually admitted<\/a> it was exactly what he\u2019d done in a defensive interview. In a very small way it\u2019s admirable he decided to tell the truth knowing the backlash he\u2019d get for doing do. That doesn\u2019t mitigate the fact he could have just as easily hired a ghostwriter for the lyrics and a vocal coach for the singing.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"cb-video-frame\">\n<div class=\"fluid-width-video-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"fitvid0\" title=\"$TARFACE &amp; Tyga - GAVE U RACKS (Official Video)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xNI54DJ0SRY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>What Tyga decided to do here is generously described as a \u201cconceptual album\u201d inspired by the excess of 1980\u2019s greed in the United States, heavily inspired by the motion picture <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scarface_(1983_film)\">Scarface<\/a>, which would of course make Tyga the Tony Montana of our story. The stink of being a low rent Tony Montana imitation emanates from \u201cGave U Racks\u201d before you even hit play, and actually listening to it fills you ears with a pungent malodorous stank that\u2019s hard to shake. A significant part of the problem is that AI models are trained on real people, and Tyga is a terrible lyricist, so the best it can regurgitate are equally awful bars that he\u2019s now singing. <em>\u201cLeft me for the better life\/I hope you enjoy that bitter life.\u201d<\/em> It didn\u2019t try to generate a better match than rhyming \u201clife\u201d with \u201clife\u201d because that\u2019s exactly what Tyga would do.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"cb-video-frame\">\n<div class=\"fluid-width-video-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"fitvid0\" title=\"$TARFACE, Tyga - AFFECTION (Official Video)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dYuwwKPT-Ps?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cAffection\u201d screams <strong>I\u2019M RICK JAMES BITCH<\/strong> without having any human soul behind it or in it. For all I know the music video could be AI generated too. <em>\u201cCounting chips up on the table, nothing stable\/Your golden touch was just a fable.\u201d<\/em> I long since stopped expecting much from Michael Ray Stevenson but this is low even by his own standards. It\u2019s worse than if his bars were merely trite or simplistic. We\u2019ve graduated to the point they are now completely disposable. All you have to do is cue up the RAM sucking, power hungry generative model of your choice and enter a few prompts. It will regurgitate this slop for you and it will sound just like anything on this album. To create \u201cPowdered Dreams\u201d you just have to say \u201cMake a 1980\u2019s song about cocaine, but have Tyga sing it.\u201d Done.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"cb-video-frame\">\n<div class=\"fluid-width-video-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"fitvid0\" title=\"$TARFACE, Tyga - POWDERED DREAMS (Official Visualizer)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mfQtZM4SMP8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>I\u2019ve previously mentioned that writer Matt Jost and I had a strong debate over whether a \u201c0 out of 10\u201d score was even possible. <a href=\"https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/reviews\/albums\/starface-tyga-starface\/\">Drew Millard of Pitchfork<\/a> was not party to that discussion. He happily and unapologetically gave the album that score and opined <em>\u201cits very existence has made the world a worse place.\u201d<\/em> The moral, legal and environmental debate about artificial intelligence will rage on long after the fervor about this album dies down, but the precedent it sets has fundamentally altered rap in a way we can\u2019t solve with a finger snap. Who will be next to let a model trained on their work make their music? Snoop Dogg? T.I.? Paul Wall? No one knows. Someone will though. We\u2019re going to have to live with artists who are too caught up in their lifestyle to even bother creating their own art; and quite possibly tour to perform songs they had no part in even creating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The \u201c$TARFACE\u201d album by Tyga became infamous before I even decided to review it, and I\u2019ll get into the reasons why in just a moment. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to track Tyga\u2019s review scores dating back to his debut LP \u2014 after all RapReviews has been with him for his entire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hip-hop"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tyga :: $TARFACE - Aurapulse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aurapulse.live\/?p=6\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tyga :: $TARFACE - Aurapulse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The \u201c$TARFACE\u201d album by Tyga became infamous before I even decided to review it, and I\u2019ll get into the reasons why in just a moment. 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