I Think

I Think — Tyler, The Creator (2019)

"I Think" is a track from Tyler, The Creator's fifth studio album IGOR, released on May 17, 2019, through Columbia Records. The album arrived as one of the most critically anticipated projects of the year and exceeded even heightened expectations, receiving near-universal acclaim and debuting at number 1 on the Billboard 200. "I Think" served as one of the album's most immediately accessible moments, operating as a radio-friendly entry point into a project that was otherwise structurally unconventional by the standards of commercial hip-hop.

Tyler, The Creator produced the entirety of IGOR himself, continuing his practice of total creative control over his projects. The production on "I Think" showcases his characteristic approach to neo-soul and funk-influenced hip-hop, layering live instrumentation textures, chopped vocal samples, and synthesizer work into a lush sonic environment that bears little resemblance to the trap production dominating mainstream rap at the time. The beat draws on a tradition of soul music interpolation that Tyler had been developing across his previous albums, particularly Flower Boy (2017), but pushes it into a more maximalist, orchestral direction.

Solange Knowles appears as a credited collaborator on IGOR, and the album features a range of vocal contributors whose voices are processed and integrated into the production in ways that make traditional featured artist crediting difficult. "I Think" benefits from this layered vocal approach, with textures that blur the boundaries between sample, live performance, and electronic manipulation. The result is a sound that is simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, drawing on the history of funk and soul while remaining unmistakably modern in execution.

"I Think" was released as a promotional single and charted on the Billboard Hot 100, driven primarily by streaming. The song's chart performance was part of the broader commercial success of IGOR, which accumulated hundreds of millions of streams and became one of the most consumed albums of 2019 across all streaming platforms. Tyler's transition from a critically divisive figure in the early 2010s to a critically celebrated mainstream presence was fully realized with IGOR, and "I Think" was a central exhibit in that transformation.

The album IGOR won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards in January 2020, a recognition that surprised many observers given the album's deviation from conventional rap structures and its deep integration of soul, electronic, and pop influences. The Grammy win significantly elevated the cultural profile of all tracks on the album, including "I Think," which received renewed streaming attention following the ceremony.

Critical reception for "I Think" was enthusiastic. Reviewers highlighted it as one of the album's most melodically immediate tracks, accessible in ways that the more structurally experimental portions of IGOR were not, while still operating within Tyler's idiosyncratic aesthetic framework. Publications including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times included "I Think" in their coverage of the album as a highlight and a demonstration of Tyler's ability to write songs that were genuinely affecting rather than merely technically impressive.

The music video released in connection with "I Think" featured Tyler in the IGOR persona, a blond-haired, expressionless character whose deadpan presentation contrasted with the emotional intensity of the music. This visual conceptualism reinforced the album's themes of masked feeling and suppressed desire, and the video was widely shared and discussed as an extension of the artistic statement that IGOR as a whole was making. The visual language of the IGOR era became one of the more distinctive aesthetic statements in pop music during 2019.

From a commercial standpoint, IGOR represented the largest first-week streaming numbers of Tyler's career to that point, a remarkable achievement for an album that deliberately resisted many of the conventions associated with maximizing streaming performance. Its success demonstrated that an audience existed for sophisticated, emotionally complex music that did not sacrifice formal ambition for accessibility, and "I Think" served as proof of that audience's appetite for what Tyler was offering.

The song's position in the broader arc of Tyler's career reflects the extraordinary creative and commercial growth he achieved across a decade of recording. From the deliberately provocative work of his Odd Future years through the introspection of Wolf and Cherry Bomb to the breakthrough warmth of Flower Boy, "I Think" represents a fully mature artistic voice operating at the top of its capacity.