911/Mr. Lonely

Album: Flower Boy (2017)
Charted: 101
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Tyler, the Creator opens about up about his feelings of restlessness, and alienation.

    Purchase some things until I'm annoyed
    These items is fillin' the void
    Been fillin' it for so long
    I don't even know if it's s--t I enjoy (ohh)
    Current battle as an adult
    My partner is a shadow


    Tyler admits that much of what he gets up to is an attempt to break a feeling of boredom and isolation.
  • Steve Lacy from the Internet and singer Anna of the North join Tyler on the hook and bridge, while Frank Ocean contributes a short verse. Tyler told Zane Lowe on Beats 1 about his Odd Future colleague:

    "I've never ever in our life planned a . I'm always in the studio just making s--t and he's like 'where you at?' [Frank] was like, 'Let me try something.' He just started saying 'chirp chirp chirp chirp' about 400 f---in' times."
  • The song went through multiple revisions over the course of a year. Tyler told The Carmichael Show's Jerrod Carmichael.

    "'911' and 'Mr. Lonely' were originally different songs kinda together. It was this jazz take I had that was super triumphant and just sounded grand. A lot of those lyrics were in that song, and I just took them and placed them on '911' and took the verse and placed it on 'Mr. Lonely' and added some stuff. The version that came out is the 25th version.

    The first version was over an interlude song that Tony! Toni! Toné! had. I looped it, sang over that, liked the hook that I put there, and made like 30 beats for it. And the versions aren't just different type of lyrics, it's different beats, different melodies. I took the beat from the fashion show I did, reworked that, took the lyrics from the original 'Mr. Lonely,' and implemented that… I made that bridge and it was just the beat, and I remember stopping like, 'I made the bridge I always wanted to make.'"
  • This is song number ten on Flower Boy, ensuring Tyler keeps up a track-listing trend he's adopted on his albums since the release of "VCR / Wheels" on 2009's Bastard. The tenth track on each of the rapper's records have consistently been a blend of more than one song.

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