Tyler, the Creator’s Brilliant Evolution Can’t Erase His Past
Tyler, the Creator’s Brilliant Evolution Can’t Erase His Anti-Black Past
By now, Tyler, the Creator has mastered the art of reinvention. He’s gone from skater to couture, from provocateur to Grammy-winning auteur. His music has grown up and his fashion has elevated to grandpa-chic, he’s come to grips with his sexuality, and his tone has softened.
So surely he thought he was safe to walk the social media streets to share his love for singer D’Angelo, who died from pancreatic cancer at the tender age of 51, and like a post that noted that “tyler’s fanbase hates black music despite tyler himself having a very deep love and appreciation for it. n***a has charlie wilson, erykah badu, dj drama etc. collaborations and they still refuse to engage with black art on any meaningful level. very cannibalistic.”
Still, the celebration of D’Angelo’s legacy—and the critique of Tyler’s white fanbase for failing to engage with Black music meaningfully—sparked a new round of scrutiny into Tyler’s old social media posts. The consensus? Tyler created all of this.
In the late 2010s, Tyler, the Creator emerged as a P.T. Barnum of sorts, part showman, part instigator, part participant in the show that was always created to careen off the side of a mountain because everyone wants to marvel at the destruction. He was an artist whose shock-value lyrics and incendiary social-media posts were part of his outsider brand. His Twitter feed was a running experiment in shock value. His posts weren’t just self-deprecating, immature, clever satire or coded critique–it was just racism, disguised as edgy commentary.
Tyler wasn’t just pushing boundaries; he was joining in a chorus of anti-Black voices that mocked Black people. Tyler wasn’t calling Black people to task, he was using the same lash white people used to beat us with; the same oppressive language just dressed up as art. And his white fans loved him for it.
But, like the North, Black folks remember. And Tyler doesn’t get to breeze past his history of anti-Blackness just because he misses D’Angelo or wears hard bottom shoes more than Vans, now.
In 2013, while George Zimmerman was on trial for killing Trayvon Martin, Tyler took to social media to hope that Black people “DON’T RIOT OR GO ON TO PROVE TO THE OTHERS THAT THEY ARE ANIMALS AND SHIT.”
In 2014 Tyler tweeted: “I HATE BLACK HISTORY MONTH. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO FUCKING SEPARATE N***AS STILL.”
Another archived tweet criticized Black people’s reactions to civic unrest during the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white police officer killed unarmed teen, Mike Brown: “AND BLACK PEOPLE ARE CURRENTLY MAD RIGHT NOW BUT IN 2 WEEKS WILL BE OVER IT CAUSE THEY REALLY DON’T CARE, COOL HASHTAG THO RIGHT?”
And that’s just a few tweets since part of Tyler’s rebrand has included deleting his most jarring comments about Black people — the same community he’s now celebrated for representing with creativity and defiance. It’s important to note that he didn’t just mock Black people, he made fun of Black speech, made jokes about dark skin, and threw around anti-Black stereotypes as punchlines.
During a 2014 appearance on Larry King Now, Tyler noted that Black folks shouldn’t be upset if white people use the N-word.
Back then, Tyler claimed it was all jokes. But for fans who grew up hearing those same slurs used as weapons, Tyler’s jokes didn’t sound liberating — they sounded like betrayal. Because what Tyler and Odd Future, a band of like minded hip-hop Avengers represented for so many Black outcasts was a place to belong. Odd Future wasn’t just a rap collective; it was a movement for Black boys that didn’t idolize gangsta rap, that loved skateboarding and dressing differently. For once, those kids who felt like rejects had a place to belong and sadly, Tyler’s anti-Black language cut through that promise. His words told fans explicitly that his Blackness could be degraded and in fact, he did it for them. For all those Black kids he lifted up, he made fun of them just the same.
He didn’t just tweet out his hate for Black people, he literally made Black face t-shirts to be sold at his concert. He even made a pickaninny hat, thankfully members of the Internet, who are also a part of the Odd Future collective, called him out.
Then there was an image of him as a Klansman with a rope around a Black person’s neck:
And an image of him in white face dressed as a neo-nazi:
On “Thought I Was Dead,” a track off last year’s CHROMAKOPIA album, he addressed “old tweets” and “old t-shirts” like so:
“White boys mockin’ this shit and y’all mad at me? Y’all can suck my d–k,
Pull up old tweets, pull up old t-shirts, all that, I’ll moonwalk over that b–ch”
And that’s the part that Tyler doesn’t understand and probably never will. If you don’t care enough to address the hate that you created, then you don’t get to come back home and act like nothing happened. The reason people used his D’Angelo tweet to point out Tyler’s anti-Blackness is because D’Angelo is ours. All of it. The music, his love of full-bodied, dark skinned, soul singer Angie Stone, the afro, the braids, the gospel-infused, burden-destroying, powerful voice. It’s ours. And, Tyler doesn’t get to cosplay some alternative origin story in which he was always down.
Nah, fam.
Tyler has never apologized for his transgressions against Black people and, most importantly, dark-skinned Black women. Tyler gets to move on as if it never happened. Today he’s a beloved musical impresario and a fashion icon. The industry allowed for that transformation with even a note on his jacket; his record, as far as they are concerned, is spotless. Because that’s how easy Black artists can be forgiven when their offenses are against their own.
Tyler doesn’t get to evolve past the hurt he caused without acknowledging what he caused. It’s telling that he has reckoned with his homophobia much more than his anti-Blackness, but y’all aren’t ready for that conversation.
Tyler, the Creator’s Brilliant Evolution Can’t Erase His Anti-Black Past was originally published on cassiuslife.com