Where Does Tyler, The Creator Go From Here?
His recent realization about his entitled fans has to be frustrating for him, but it’s also self-inflicted.
Photo credit: Raph_PH
Tyler, The Creator has experienced backlash for his past antics before, but nothing like what’s happened in the past two weeks, with a mass digital “lashing” from X users reprising and lambasting his past anti-Black tweets. After his Instagram tribute to the late D’Angelo was bombarded by fans begging for a new album, he liked a tweet that stated, “tyler’s fanbase hates black music despite tyler himself having a very deep love and appreciation for it. nigga has charlie wilson, erykah badu, dj drama etc. collaborations and they still refuse to engage with black art on any meaningful level. very cannibalistic.” It’s got to be frustrating for him, but it’s also self-inflicted.
It’s worth noting that Tyler and Odd Future were a flashpoint moment for Blerds who appreciated how each member represented a prism of Blackness that shirked societal norms. When OF first made waves, so much of the hip-hop landscape was wearing SWAG snapbacks and Givenchy and trendy street wear brands, portraying themselves as tougher, richer, or cooler than everyone else. Odd Future swarmed the Jimmy Fallon set as an irreverent crew that was crass, sarcastic — and talented as hell. The package helped them resonate with every teenager who felt like their left-of-center tastes made them “weirdoes” in their community. Unfortunately, people who identify with the idea of intra-racial ostracization tend to romanticize it and come to resent everyone who made them feel that way.
Tyler, who was born and raised in Hawthorne, California, seemingly was that kid. He told SPIN magazine in 2014, “Nobody got my sense of humor. I was a black skater kid…I went to school with a bunch of black kids so they kinda swayed away from me. I was such a leader that I just went around by myself…I was thinking differently from others.” From his debut album Goblin, he channeled Slim Shady’s angst, “crazy white boy” chaos, and lust for the F-word for a new generation. Off the mic, he delved into the kind of sophomoric behavior that helped him resonate with fellow trolls. If Little Brother was once deemed “too smart” for BET, the network may have internally decided he was “too weird” to embrace in his early years. Elsewhere in the SPIN interview, Tyler divulged, “I guess because of slavery and shit, we just have to stick together and be so strong that being different is taboo. It’s like you can’t think outside the box in the black community. That’s why I have so many white friends, because, real shit, no one really cares about that. I hate race. I hate that shit.”
His ire seeps through the screen. And it’s also apparent in tweets like, “CRACKERS NIGGERS CHINKS WETBACK COME ON NIGGUH LETS FUCKING VOTE!,” or “I HATE BLACK HISTORY MONTH. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO SEPERATE NIGGAS STILL. ‘ OH IT’S PAYING HOMAGE TO OUR HEROES’ FUCK THAT,” or “IF THIS ZIMMERAN SHIT DOESN’T GO RIGHT I HOPE BLACKS DONT RIOT OR GO ON TO PROVE TO THE OTHERS THAT THEY ARE ANIMALS AND SHIT.”
He sold Odd Future hats and shirts with a Black pickaninny face on them — even members of The Internet called the latter out. Twitter users recently reshared pictures of him in a KKK robe and another photo of him in whiteface. It would be easy to simplify all of this as mere ragebait, but as the adage goes, there’s a little truth ingrained in all humor. After reading his SPIN comments and taking in all this nonsense, it’s easy to conclude that he had insecurities with his Blackness. He claimed he didn’t care about race, yet loved getting a rise out of people with racist symbolism. Only someone with no racial pride would so freely seek to offend almost every ethnic group.
Of course, Tyler refined his public image over time. From Flower Boy on, his music shifted from brooding shock rap to relatable musings about love and family. He’s since mostly reserved his brazen outspokenness for artistic and cultural critiques. His penchant for skate wear made way for jewelry and Jordans, boasting relationships with Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta. Through the lens of Insecure, his image graduated from someone who’d be typecast as an annoying little brother or co-worker into a suave love interest (with his music soundtracking the episode). With each passing album, fans and critics alike lauded his evolution.
The more palatable his music — and image — became, the higher he commercially ascended. Now, he’s headlining arena tours and helming the Golf Wang festival, one of the few national exhibitions for Black music. Throughout his assimilation into Hollywood’s Black excellence class, however, he hasn’t been able to shed the fanbase that fell in love with an edgelord, and he’s supported heavily by fans who don’t appreciate Black culture like he’s come to. Many Black entertainers resent the way American consumers devalue their humanity and flatten them into objects of consumption. But Tyler, more than many acts, must consider how much he brought it on himself.
Few people parroting the “evolution” discourse said the quiet part out loud: as Tyler got older, he was simply watching his mouth more and embracing things that many Black people have always loved. Public friendships with A$AP Rocky and music videos like “Darling I,” with Black women as love interests, amount to identifying with the classmates he once shunned. Music fans lauded him for upgrading his closet and ceasing the incendiary tweets, but it’s less clear whether he updated his racial politics. That ambiguity allowed his non-Black fans, who obsess over Black culture but never want to consider race, to still cling to him.
I’ve spoken to multiple people, all Black women, about how uncomfortable his white fans have made them feel at his shows with moshing and overall ruckus behavior. When I was at Day N Vegas 2022, SZA’s set was delayed a bit because of his fans pushing to the front in anticipation of his night-closing performance. This was the first major festival after the Astroworld tragedy; they weren’t quite ragers, but they were annoying, and seemed like the kind of entitled cohort who would ask for new music under a tribute post.
I enjoy Tyler’s music and appreciate his passion for music-making. But his skeptics aren’t wrong for wondering how he went from dissing Black History Month to portraying a Black Panther in the “Darling I” video. When people condemn the “Black Excellence” charade, they’re often chastising the neoliberal grifters exploiting Black solidarity to coax us into keeping them rich and powerful. However, artists like Tyler, the Creator and Donald Glover, who also appealed to non-Black audiences before winning over more Black consumers by shifting their aesthetic, embody another layer of the facade. It’s like a fresh fit and facial hair is the M.I.B. neuralyzer for shaky racial politics.
Within 20 years, we saw Kanye werewolf from a seemingly regular(ish) dude from South Side Chicago into a MAGA nazi sympathizer. All the while, his anti-Blackness and Nazi sympathizing were hiding below the surface. At this point, no one deserves the benefit of the doubt without a concerted effort to atone for their past anti-Blacknesss. Some have come to Tyler’s defense on social media, empathizing with what they perceive as the internalized self-hate some kids go through, but he hasn’t spoken for himself, making them harder to reckon with. The venom in those old tweets can’t merely be swept under the rug as a rebellious phase; he was in his early 20s for some of them.
So, where does Tyler go from here? Ideally, he’ll reckon with all of this in the music. Even before these resurfaced tweets, there was a sentiment among some music fans that they’d like to see him overhaul his sonic formula. His run of post-Flower Boy albums proves that he’s a master of melody and arrangement, but there’s more thematic and sonic ground to cover. We know what the elephant in the room is for Tyler. And after liking a tweet calling out the fracture between him and his non-Black fans, he knows we know he knows too.
In Tyler’s tribute to D’Angelo, he lauded him as an “alien.” I obviously get that it was a compliment, but D’Angelo was no extraterrestrial. He was just a man brave enough to wade into the muck of the human condition, where vices and yearnings, the pursuit of peace, and the processing of pain comingle. Good artists express an image; the most beloved artists express what’s in the mirror. For Tyler, being honest about how he reckons with his past comments and actions, his updated views on race, and how he feels about the predatory sect of his fanbase would be the foundation of his most compelling project yet. And it’s worth wondering if it could come with a musical approach that will alienate the unappreciative white fans he now resents.
That said, on the flipside, the music industry is adept at helping cash cows churn through controversy. The field is full of artists accused of abuse, supporting Trump, and all other kinds of misdeeds, who’ve rarely been made to face accountability for various reasons. That’s not to say that Tyler’s old behavior compares to abuse, but it’d nonetheless be easy for him to let all this fuss dissipate, drop another album in lockstep with his recent work, and tour the world again. But, with all his love for the history of Black music and past comments about being authentic to your craft, it feels like he knows what the moment calls for. Time will tell if he meets it.
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