One thing’s for sure: Tyler, The Creator isn’t interested in this review. Google ‘Tyler, Goblin review’, though, and you’ll find plenty of reading. The perfect storm of adulation, revulsion and backlash surrounding the second album from the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All leader is pretty familiar by now. It’s also the kind of publicity a record label couldn’t help but love. Just don’t expect the man at the centre of it all to care.

We’re roughly two years on from Tyler, the Creator’s debut Bastard. If you’ve already worked your way through the sprawling, scrappy collected work of OFWGKTA, Goblin might seem overdue. For the first time, there’s a label involved, XL Recordings, whose roster reads like a Coachella wish-list: Radiohead, the xx, Friendly Fires and Sigur Ros are among its stars. The most talked-about firebrand in hip hop isn’t a bad addition to the family. And that’s precisely the kind of statement Tyler is hard-wired to rally against.

Album opener Goblin finds our protagonist back on the therapist’s couch, agonising over the hype, the unwanted stares in skate-parks and airports, the outrage about his lyrics and even the pressure to top a scorching intro track. The six-minute rant winds up in familiarly dark territory, leaving you wondering if the next 14 tracks will prove a heavy slog. Then comes the masterful production of lead single Yonkers, its murky, lurching beat a perfect foil to more spewing of vitriol. Switching for a verse to Tyler’s deranged double Wolf Haley, it’s an arresting opening barrage.

By contrast, Radicals grates more than it thrills, with its call-to-arms “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” only prompting mild amusement. While for many the ‘skip’ button will look more appealing than burning shit, there is an interesting nugget about freewill in there. Radicals is indicative of the album’s hair-trigger split personality; riotous one minute, stark and wounded the next.

Even when the words come off as repellent, Goblin is peppered with ingenious production. There’s nothing superfluous distracting from Tyler’s familial outpourings on Nightmare, pairing a stripped-back beat with some eerie xylophone. It’s these confessionals that give the album its weight, evening out the more juvenile tendencies on show. Her rings true to the thoughts of an infatuated, sex-crazed 19-year-old dude, with sweet nothings like “aww, my dick’s getting hard from thoughts of dating this bitch”. The track’s beat structure, though, is anything but crude. As with all things Odd Future, you can be hailing the production while you recoil at the lyrics.

Plenty of reviews have commented that Goblin needed a ruthless editor to trim about 20 minutes off its running time. As true as that is, the tail-end – everything after the lame playground brags of Bitch Suck Dick – seems indispensable. Time will tell if the lengthy therapy session-turned-murder scene Window will reward repeat visits, but the album ends on a searing high with Golden.

Throughout Goblin Tyler has spat plenty of bile, but Golden pulls it all into tight, furious focus. With one dexterous verse imagining his funeral, the album’s final note is distinctly sour. It’s this pervasive gloom that lingers after Goblin. Not everything here works, but the triumphs are indelible. If the rules of sequels dictate that each chapter is darker than the last, expect Tyler’s 2012-slated Wolf to be pitch-black.

Goblin is out now through Remote Control Records.