How Tyler, the Creator Grew Into the Rebel He Always Wanted to Be (2024)

Editor’s note: For more on the 10th anniversary of Tyler, the Creator’s Goblin, check out this week’s episode of The Ringer Music Show here, which features Rob Harvilla and Logan Murdock discussing their experiences with Odd Future and stories from producer Lani Renaldo, who grew up with a young Tyler.

On the fourth track on Tyler, the Creator’s fifth studio album, Igor, comedian Jerrod Carmichael tells the listening audience “exactly what you run from, you end up chasing.” Those words may as well double as the title of Tyler’s autobiography. The interlude appears on an album that features the musician displaying his fullest musical form to date, mixing rock, hip-hop, and pop along with a rollout that saw him dressed in a pink tuxedo, silver shoes, and a blond wig. No longer music’s black sheep, Tyler was now embraced by the establishment he openly mocked a decade prior, shooting videos with Tracee Ellis Ross while serving as a pitchman for Converse. He was singing songs about love and heartbreak without demeaning those around him. At 28, he was openly exploring his sexuality without using the slurs that had made him one of the industry’s most polarizing figures. After eight years of trolling, beef, and all the controversies in between, he had finally gotten out of his own way, all while keeping his crown as music’s most interesting rebel.

All of this wasn’t expected when I first encountered his music 10 years ago, in a high school classroom. It was late February 2011 in Ms. Bell’s first period, where little work was getting done. The homies congregated around a district-issued iMac and listened to a song called “Yonkers” by this weird kid who somehow got Kanye West to tweet out his music video. The beat was unmistakably a nod to East Coast brilliance, and the lyrics were unforgettable. “I’m a fucking walking paradox,” he opened, before following it up with, “No, I’m not.” By the end, he had threatened to crash an airplane carrying rapper B.o.B and to stab Bruno Mars, and he had eaten a roach. Somehow I was intrigued.

After the video ended, we watched Tyler’s Odd Future collective’s performance on Jimmy Fallon. I was just as mesmerized. The group started with “Sandwitches,” an equally expletive-filled song that had Tyler jumping all over the stage, taunting and inhaling every bit of the attention the platform provided. He rapped about pain and rebelling, and 17-year-old me thought it was great. “The Golf Wang hooligans is breaking up the school again / And showing you and yours that breaking rules is really cool again.” By the end, he was riding Fallon’s back as Mos Def yelled “swag” in the camera. Three months later, Tyler dropped Goblin, an 82-minute piece of morbid self-therapy. It was a jolt, a moment, a rallying cry—and it was everything I thought I needed. But for Tyler, it was a time to get every bit of his pain out into the universe, even if it could end his career before it started.

Goblin, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on Monday, remains a middle finger to the establishment, capturing the spirit of anarchy in a way only a pissed-off 20-year-old can. His targets spread far and wide: On “Sandwitches,” it was blogs like 2DopeBoyz that wouldn’t promote his music. On “Nightmare,” it was his absentee dad. Most famously, on “Radicals,” it was everything. “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school,” the chorus went. As an 18-year-old soon-to-be dropout, the anger resonated with me. It felt like what my grandparents said they felt when they had to sneak to listen to Richard Pryor records in the 1960s.

But sometimes, the rebellious spirit veered into something ugly—something hateful and violent. Take “She,” a song in which Tyler takes on the role of a man stalking a woman, reworking a nursery rhyme to threaten her: “One, two; you’re the girl that I want / Three, four, five, six, seven; shit / Eight is the bullets if you say no after all this.” Elsewhere on Goblin, Tyler’s lyrics included so much homophobia that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation decried the album. This was the flip side to all that youthful aggression, and it was hard to reconcile with the music I enjoyed.


But while listening to the homophobia and songs that alluded to rape and other horrific images felt undeniably uncomfortable, his message of “Do what the fuck makes you happy” became a life credo. I felt forgotten, bitter, and every other emotion a teenager feels. And Tyler was feeling the same way. He was born in Los Angeles to a Black mother and a Nigerian father, the latter of whom would soon abandon him. He settled near Inglewood, California, right next to the Black middle class. But instead of inhabiting one of the sun-kissed estates in Ladera Heights, he lived with his grandmother in “shitty apartments” across from a Bank of America. Outside of the house, he felt like an outcast: He liked skateboarding and writing on his Vans, and his peers teased him for it. (“I used to get called ‘white boy.’ I hated that shit,” he told The Fader in 2014. “I’m in seventh grade in Inglewood, too white for the Black kids, too Black for the white kids.”)

He latched on to people he didn’t know: celebrities. He got his comedic timing from Dave Chappelle and his musical tastes from Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, and then he learned how to channel his rage from Eminem. Then he found friends with similar interests and formed a group called “Odd Future.” Boasting as many as 13 members, the crew rode skateboards, made dark jokes, and shared a love for weird shit. Some of them sang, like Frank Ocean and Syd tha Kyd. Some of them rapped, but not as good as Tyler or Earl Sweatshirt.

The crew broke out in 2010 as their early songs spread on Tumblr pages and social media. Earl’s eponymous single became the calling card for Odd Future—particularly because of its video, which featured an aesthetic halfway between a skate video and a horror flick. Tyler’s first mixtape, Bastard, also caught on, even if—or perhaps because—the lyrics were of questionable taste. (On “French!,” he raps that he wants to sodomize the Virgin Mary.)

The rage continued when Earl’s mother shipped him to boarding school in American Samoa shortly after Odd Future blew up (which prompted “Free Earl” campaigns across the internet). It continued following the release of Goblin, even as Tyler got more opportunities. He directed a video for Mountain Dew depicting a goat beating women and getting pulled over. It was odd at best, and arguably promoted racism, sexism, and abuse, and prominent Black commentators like Dr. Boyce Watkins called him out. Even some of his own bandmates said they didn’t approve of his antics. Syd, who identifies as gay, said she felt like Tyler and Odd Future used her as a “get out of jail free card.” He felt backed into a corner, and his attempts to defend himself did little to help his cause. The end result was often contradictory: He wanted listeners to gravitate toward his “be you” message without fostering an environment for a core piece of his audience to do just that.

That attitude continued on 2013’s Wolf and 2015’s Cherry Bomb. Tyler hadn’t changed, but I had—I was in my early 20s, no longer a teenager with misguided rage. I wasn’t trying to hear the slurs or the overall immaturity. I wanted Tyler to grow up with me and he wasn’t able to. I was over it all.

Then he dropped Flower Boy.

Prior to the release of the 2017 album, I’d largely avoided any of the rollout, figuring Tyler was still lost. But the 18-year-old kid in me emerged and said, “What the hell? Play it.” The next 46 minutes and 33 seconds were perfect. Frank Ocean sounded angelic singing over the chords of “Where This Flower Blooms.” Tyler sounded relatable yearning for love on “See You Again.” And when rage did surface—like on the buoyant “I Ain’t Got Time!”—it felt controlled. But what hooked me in again was his performance on “Garden Shed,” a melancholic song that many have read as a declaration of his sexuality:

For the garden, that is where I was hidin’
That was real love I was in
Ain’t no reason to pretend
Garden shed, garden shed, garden shed
Garden shed for the garçons
Them feelings I was guardin’

The use of the word garçon—“boy” in French—led to speculation that Tyler was gay or bisexual. He teased his sexual preference in other songs, saying “I been kissing white boys since two thousand and fo’” on “I Ain’t Got Time!” and that he’s currently looking for “’95 Leo” on “Who Dat Boy.” He hasn’t publicly confirmed his sexuality in the years since Flower Boythough tweets from 2015, where he (sort of) came out, resurfaced shortly after the album’s release. But it hasn’t mattered. The man who used gay slurs for much of his career appeared to finally be free in his own skin.

He became the embodiment of Carmicheal’s words, and his latest album, 2019’s Igor, was a classic because of it. No longer shackled by perception and youthful destruction, he was musically liberated. Igor was rock, R&B, U.K. pop, hip-hop, Pharrell, and Ye all in one. We were in Tyler’s genreless world, and that was more rebellious than the chant of “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school.”

The album wasn’t without controversy, however. Except this time, it wasn’t about any questionable lines. The main issue people will remember centers on how the Recording Academy treated Igor—the organization left it out of the Album of the Year category at the 2020 Grammys, but gave him a nomination for Best Rap Album. He won, but he didn’t take it as a compliment, necessarily: “They always put it in a rap or urban category,” he said. “I don’t like that ‘urban’ word. That’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me.”

But the other backlash surrounding Igor may be more instructive about Tyler’s growth. The album was released the same day as DJ Khaled’s Father of Asahd. While the latter had features from Cardi B, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Beyoncé, and practically every other chart-topping rapper or singer you can imagine, Igor debuted at no. 1. Khaled, 15 years Tyler’s senior and 43 years old at the time, lashed out with social media posts taking not-so-veiled swipes at Igor and a reported trip to his record label’s office to attack the company’s marketing strategy. By comparison, Tyler looked like the mature one.

In an ironic twist, Tyler was on the other side of an outburst. And after a decade of screaming to be heard, the industry was now trying to keep up with him. In an industry built on personas, manufactured clout, and attention, Tyler had triumphed simply by being himself. He’s still funny and occasionally out of pocket, but now he’s accepted. He had to grow, and he achieved the rare feat of being defined by more than his teenage actions. Now he can create. He’s finally free, with his inner rebel still intact.

How Tyler, the Creator Grew Into the Rebel He Always Wanted to Be (2024)

FAQs

How did Tyler, the Creator grow up? ›

Tyler, the Creator was born as Tyler Gregory Okonma in Los Angeles, California on March 6, 1991. He was raised by his mother in the Ladera Heights and Hawthorne Heights sections of L.A. Growing up Tyler, the Creator taught himself how to play the piano and would design his own album covers for existing albums.

Who is Tyler, the Creator summary? ›

Tyler Gregory Okonma (born March 6, 1991) also known as Tyler, The Creator, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, director, fashion designer, and the head of his independent record label, Odd Future Records.

How did Tyler, the Creator change the world? ›

Tyler, the Creator has established himself not only as a trailblazing force in the music industry but also as a visionary in the world of fashion, continually pushing boundaries and redefining style norms.

What challenges did Tyler, the Creator face in his career? ›

One of the most controversial aspects of Tyler, the Creator's early career was his use of homophobic and misogynistic language in his lyrics. While he has since expressed regret for his past behavior, these lyrics continue to be a subject of critique and scrutiny.

Is Tyler, the Creator Japanese? ›

Tyler Gregory Okonma was born on March 6, 1991, in Hawthorne, California, the son of a Nigerian father with Igbo ancestry and an American mother of mixed African-American and white Canadian descent. He never met his father and spent his early life living in Hawthorne, moving to Ladera Heights at 17.

How did Tyler get so rich? ›

In a current Forbes mini-profile of him, the magazine notes that “Perry's wealth comes both from his cut as a producer and from a library dating back to the early 1990s: he owns 100% of the content he's created.” His “Madea” franchise, as noted, generated more than $600 million in box office grosses, although his last ...

Why is Tyler called the Creator? ›

He chose the stage name “Tyler, the Creator” because it represents his role as a creator of music and other forms of media. He has said in interviews that the name also reflects his desire to take control of his own creative direction and not be limited by traditional industry expectations.

What genre is Sza? ›

SZA is a neo soul singer, whose music has been described as alternative R&B, with elements of soul, hip hop, minimalist R&B, indie rock, cloud rap, witch house, and chillwave.

Why did Tyler create Igor? ›

Igor arrives after Tyler pours out all of his heart for his love interest, though his love interest remains focused on his ex-girlfriend. The arrival of Igor serves as a reset for the strong romantic emotions Tyler was entangled in during the album's first half.

When did Tyler get famous? ›

At such a young age Tyler, The Creator became a hit in 2011 with his first single Yonkers, which was a track from his upcoming album, Goblin. Odd Future are now a popular group with the younger generations, with their own television show 'Loiter Squad', all with thanks to Tyler Okonma's odd imagination.

What has Tyler, the Creator achieved? ›

Grammy Awards
  • 2022 Winner Grammy. Best Rap Album. For "Call Me If You Get Lost"
  • 2022 Nominee Grammy. Best Melodic Rap Performance. For "Wusyaname" ...
  • 2020 Winner Grammy. Best Rap Album. For "Igor" ...
  • 2018 Nominee Grammy. Best Rap Album. For "Flower Boy"
  • 2013 Nominee Grammy. Album of the Year.

Who is Tyler, the Creator inspired by? ›

Tyler, The Creator recalls the moment Pharrell inspired him to really get serious about music in a new clip from Hulu's upcoming docuseries, RapCaviar Presents.

What was Tyler, the Creator's first song? ›

Tyler, The Creator's first song “Arcade Radio” released on June 1, 0092.

Did Tyler, the Creator's dad leave? ›

Tyler was raised by his mother when his father left the family. Although Tyler's relationship with his father was seemingly nonexistent, that doesn't ring true for both of his parents.

Where did Earl Sweatshirt grow up? ›

Earl Sweatshirt was born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile in Chicago, Illinois, to Cheryl Harris, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and Keorapetse Kgositsile, a South African poet and political activist. Harris and Kgositsile separated when Sweatshirt was eight years old.

How did John Tyler grow up? ›

Born to an affluent family on March 29, 1790, John Tyler spent most of his life in Charles City County, Virginia. He was raised on the Tyler family plantation, Greenway, and lived there until he attended the College of William & Mary, graduating in 1807.

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