It’s been less than a year since Tyler, The Creator dropped Chromakopia, a sprawling and sharp-witted record that played with the tension between fame and fragility, and yet here he is again, coming out of nowhere with almost no build-up. Don’t Tap The Glass is a high-energy dance-floor hip-hop album full of Miami bass swagger. The opener Big Poe flips a massive Busta Rhymes hook into a rallying cry for more sweat, and more movement as we’re treated to a sharp 30 minutes of booty-shaking electro joy, and funky lowrider struts, leaning into the tone and swagger of N*E*R*D’s Lapdance and reviving an era when hip-hop was gloriously over the top but always grooved.

This isn’t the brooding provocateur of yesteryear, but Tyler the party-starter, cracking jokes with choruses that land and beats that hit. Don’t Tap The Glass is an album about loosening up and refusing to let the judgemental gaze of social media dictate your art or joy. Tyler’s message is to be prolific, messy, and embarrassing if you have to, just keep moving forward. This is an album about reclaiming the party as a space for freedom, consciously pushing back on an era of camera phones and social anxiety. Stop analyzing, and let yourself look a little dumb. There are high-octane anthems for packed dance floors, and slower-groove driven moments that feel like Prince-esque slow jams, with vocoder-laced harmonies. Mommanem feels like a callback to Chromakopia, whilst the big, bumping, swagger-drenched tunes would fit snugly alongside the biggest hits from Ludacris, when rap unapologetically belonged on the dance floor. It’s friendlier than the rap of the era it often evokes, with more playfulness and less smutty provocation, because Tyler has nothing left to prove, and has simply decided to make a joyous, groove-first dance-rap record. So stop overthinking and just move with him.