The Tyler, The Creator Controversy: Is He a Racist?
Mike Dean attacked, through a dry and direct comment, Tyler, The Creator’s new track “Thought I Was Dead”contained in the latest project, just published, by the Los Angeles artist “Chromakopia”. With this speech Dean, known for recording and mixing songs for major artists in the global hip hop industry, such as Kanye West, Tupac Shakur, Travis Scott, Jay-Z, Drake, The Weeknd and many othershas rekindled old controversies, which have evidently never died down, which have often led to Tyler being defined, due to some outbursts and provocations, a “racist against white people”. Let’s start from the lyrics of the song in question: “White boys making fun of this shit, are you mad at me? You can suck my cock. Pull out old tweets, pull out old t-shirts, do all that, I moonwalk on that bitch,” he raps.
Tyler’s attack, for many, would be aimed at rapper Ianbut despite not finding confirmation on this precise target, Mike Dean, on a post from the famous media “Rap” which reported the phrase from the song, wrote: “Racist shit”. A comment that, obviously, created a small earthquake in the hip hop world. This summer Tyler did an interview with Mav Carter on SpringHill, saying, “There’s a kid right now, this white kid, a regular Caucasian man, he’s standing here making fun of Future and Gucci Maneto make fun of rap music. And people are like, ‘This shit is tough.'” According to some reconstructions, Tyler was already attacking Ian on that occasion. The point is not the personal attack on the rapper, but the underlying motivations: as he has explained several times in the past, according to Tyler “white people make fun of hip hop culture”, a world that does not belong to them. Precisely in that interview he reiterated this concept, excluding only names such as Eminem and MacMillerwhich he admitted he respected.
It’s not the first time he’s made outbursts like the one contained in that chat or in “Thought I Was Dead”, a song that Dean didn’t like. Are they just provocations or Tyler, as many think, is really moved by some racist thoughtswhich seemed to have fallen asleep, but which now with the release of “Chromakopia” are resurfacing, bringing to light the controversies of the Los Angeles artist? Just over ten years ago his commercial for Mountain Dew was called “the most racist commercial in America” for portraying racial stereotypes and ridiculing violence against women. In the sixty-second clip, then removed, a white woman, who had suffered violence, on crutcheswas urged at the station by a police officer, also white, to identify a suspect among a line of black men that included Left Brain and L-Boy of Odd Future, the collective with which Tyler started, and Garrett Stevenson of Trash Talkas well as a talking goat.
Especially at the beginning of his career, with the publication of the ruthless album “Goblin” from 2011, Tyler, The Creator has apparently landed himself at the center of a sea of controversy for his lyrics homophobic (although he later declared himself bisexual and published the 2019 album “Igor” which focuses on a homosexual love story: it is one of his most successful albums, it was awarded at the 2020 Grammy Awards as best rap album), misogynistic and racist. The artist he has played a character several times in his albumsrecounted the distortions of society through identification with despicable individuals, this is true, but on several occasions, interviewed, without “artistic filters” like those of music, he made serious accusationsmade lewd statements about his sexual preferences towards “white boys” and accused white artists of being usurpers. He certainly masters the great art of provocation, of explosive languagebut, rightly, many remember how hip hop is a culture of union and solidarity, non-divisive and discriminating.
