"It’s an inversion of his absurdist, careless persona, that shows Tyler as self-reflective about his loneliness, his race, and his sexuality." -- Charlie S |  |
This July, Tyler The Creator put out Flower Boy, his fifth studio album with Columbia records. It’s an inversion of his absurdist, careless persona, that shows Tyler as self-reflective about his loneliness, his race, and his sexuality. Rather than lashing out and concealing his isolation with gory lyrics as seen in his previous albums, Flower Boy is much more vulnerable, and is grounded in elusive autobiography. He comes out on tracks “Ain’t Got Time” and “Who Dat Boy,” and more figuratively on “Garden Shed,” which acts as a sonic expression of coming out of the “garden shed.”
“Garden Shed” is dreamy as opposed to the previous two tracks, encapsulating the other side of Tyler’s coming out, something much more pensive and unsure of itself. He sings, “You don’t have to hide, I can smell it in your eyes” while Estelle croons a refrain of “Find the words.” In the satisfying, chaotic banger “Ain’t Got Time” he raps, “I’ve been kissing white boys in 2004.” “On Who Dat Boy” he says, “currently looking for 95 Leo”.
This album, in line with Frank Ocean’s Blonde, is opening the realms of hip hop to a new way of expressing masculinity and intimacy. It’s a turning point for Tyler, and arguably the defining album of the summer. The tracklist on Flower Boy is both honest and blasé; joyous and lonely; cutesy and demented; romantic and cynical—keeping in line with Tyler’s chaotic, and even bombastic legacy as communicator of mixed messages. This tonal multiplicity is at the core of Tyler’s image.
You can’t deny the quality of Flower Boy, which features ethereal and sometimes disorderly sound that makes up for whatever Tyler may lack in flow. That said, the album brings Tyler’s past in question. While there is still debate, for many Tyler’s coming out nullifies the previous homophobia that is rampant in his discography, where the slur “faggot” is commonplace, and was used 213 times on his album Goblin. In an interview with NME, he said, “Gay just means you’re stupid.” Before this album, many were hesitant to accept Tyler as “woke” and he was seen by some as careless, ignorant, and insincere. Gawker said of him, “Tyler's use of the word "faggot" seems less of a product of thinking he's so down with gays that he can appropriate their slurs than the general aesthetic recklessness that Tyler and his Odd Future crew embody.” His new album and his ‘coming out of the closet’ establishes that there is no question of Tyler’s depth. But does is discount his history of sexism?
The predictable plethora of ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes’ in his lyrics are one thing for any consumer of rap music, but Tyler’s verses glamorise rape, and speak violently about women. His track “Tron Cat”, which was put out on his 2011 LP Goblin, has an almost laughable number of lines about raping and beating women. It was hard to pick from the wide selection of disgusting lines in this song, but here’s a few: ‘I fuck bitches with no permission’; ‘This the type of shit that make a Chris Brown want to kick a whore’; ‘She run ‘round this motherfucking her legs loose/Until I accidentally get a saw to her head, oops!’; ‘Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome.’ And then in his song “Blow”, which was put out on Tyler’s 2009 mixtape Bastard, he raps, ‘You call that shit rape but I think rape’s fun.’
Tyler described “Blow” as being written from the perspective of serial killer Ted Bundy, and maybe Tron Cat is written from a similar kind of persona, but does it matter? One can speculate that he puts out songs like “Tron Cat” with the intention of being subversive, rather than violently offensive and careless. It’s important to mention that shortly after the release of Goblin, Tyler was quoted in Spin as saying “Talking about rape and cutting bodies up, it just doesn’t interest me anymore.” This is not an apology, but would show some semblance of growth if his misogyny stopped there.
Three years later, when the Australian feminist organization Collective Shout tried to get Tyler’s show in Sydney cancelled, his fans barraged Coralie Alison, director of Collective Shout with threats of death and rape. Tyler himself called her a ‘fucking whore’ on stage at the 2015 show in Sydney, Collective Shout had failed to cancel. Neither Tyler, nor his fans seem to see these songs as a comment on the toxic masculinity cloaking the hip hop genre, they see these lyrics as encouragement to speak violently to and about women. The question is, in the wake of Tyler’s new album, do we look at these actions and lyrics in a new light?
There is something to be said for separating the artist from the art. People do it with Woody Allen all the time, despite him being a pedophile. But Woody Allen doesn’t explicitly make movies about pedophilia, so it’s easy for people to ignore that part of him. Tyler, someone who has never been accused of sexual violence, is rapping about rape. This is a different conundrum. Tyler is undeniably a misogynist, but his lyrics are hyperbolic and possibly speak to a deeper inner conflict. He is a much more complicated subject to decode.
Tyler’s lyrics about rape can be seen as a rejection of his queerness. They can be seen as a projected masculinity in response to the inner turmoil of being in the closet. How do we let an artist grow and evolve, while taking their track record into account? When Jay-Z put out 4:44, it showed a more vulnerable side of him that recognized his previous sexism, and apologized to his wife and daughter, while also recognizing his mother’s journey as a closeted lesbian. Jay-Z’s apology doesn’t necessarily excuse his past, it just speaks to his growth as a person and an artist.
But Tyler’s new album does nothing to apologize for his sexism. The album does expose us to an undeniably vulnerable and conflicted side of Tyler, and it contributes something important to the typically hyper-masculine and straight canon of hip-hop. But unless he apologizes, he remains a misogynist.
“Garden Shed” is dreamy as opposed to the previous two tracks, encapsulating the other side of Tyler’s coming out, something much more pensive and unsure of itself. He sings, “You don’t have to hide, I can smell it in your eyes” while Estelle croons a refrain of “Find the words.” In the satisfying, chaotic banger “Ain’t Got Time” he raps, “I’ve been kissing white boys in 2004.” “On Who Dat Boy” he says, “currently looking for 95 Leo”.
This album, in line with Frank Ocean’s Blonde, is opening the realms of hip hop to a new way of expressing masculinity and intimacy. It’s a turning point for Tyler, and arguably the defining album of the summer. The tracklist on Flower Boy is both honest and blasé; joyous and lonely; cutesy and demented; romantic and cynical—keeping in line with Tyler’s chaotic, and even bombastic legacy as communicator of mixed messages. This tonal multiplicity is at the core of Tyler’s image.
You can’t deny the quality of Flower Boy, which features ethereal and sometimes disorderly sound that makes up for whatever Tyler may lack in flow. That said, the album brings Tyler’s past in question. While there is still debate, for many Tyler’s coming out nullifies the previous homophobia that is rampant in his discography, where the slur “faggot” is commonplace, and was used 213 times on his album Goblin. In an interview with NME, he said, “Gay just means you’re stupid.” Before this album, many were hesitant to accept Tyler as “woke” and he was seen by some as careless, ignorant, and insincere. Gawker said of him, “Tyler's use of the word "faggot" seems less of a product of thinking he's so down with gays that he can appropriate their slurs than the general aesthetic recklessness that Tyler and his Odd Future crew embody.” His new album and his ‘coming out of the closet’ establishes that there is no question of Tyler’s depth. But does is discount his history of sexism?
The predictable plethora of ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes’ in his lyrics are one thing for any consumer of rap music, but Tyler’s verses glamorise rape, and speak violently about women. His track “Tron Cat”, which was put out on his 2011 LP Goblin, has an almost laughable number of lines about raping and beating women. It was hard to pick from the wide selection of disgusting lines in this song, but here’s a few: ‘I fuck bitches with no permission’; ‘This the type of shit that make a Chris Brown want to kick a whore’; ‘She run ‘round this motherfucking her legs loose/Until I accidentally get a saw to her head, oops!’; ‘Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome.’ And then in his song “Blow”, which was put out on Tyler’s 2009 mixtape Bastard, he raps, ‘You call that shit rape but I think rape’s fun.’
Tyler described “Blow” as being written from the perspective of serial killer Ted Bundy, and maybe Tron Cat is written from a similar kind of persona, but does it matter? One can speculate that he puts out songs like “Tron Cat” with the intention of being subversive, rather than violently offensive and careless. It’s important to mention that shortly after the release of Goblin, Tyler was quoted in Spin as saying “Talking about rape and cutting bodies up, it just doesn’t interest me anymore.” This is not an apology, but would show some semblance of growth if his misogyny stopped there.
Three years later, when the Australian feminist organization Collective Shout tried to get Tyler’s show in Sydney cancelled, his fans barraged Coralie Alison, director of Collective Shout with threats of death and rape. Tyler himself called her a ‘fucking whore’ on stage at the 2015 show in Sydney, Collective Shout had failed to cancel. Neither Tyler, nor his fans seem to see these songs as a comment on the toxic masculinity cloaking the hip hop genre, they see these lyrics as encouragement to speak violently to and about women. The question is, in the wake of Tyler’s new album, do we look at these actions and lyrics in a new light?
There is something to be said for separating the artist from the art. People do it with Woody Allen all the time, despite him being a pedophile. But Woody Allen doesn’t explicitly make movies about pedophilia, so it’s easy for people to ignore that part of him. Tyler, someone who has never been accused of sexual violence, is rapping about rape. This is a different conundrum. Tyler is undeniably a misogynist, but his lyrics are hyperbolic and possibly speak to a deeper inner conflict. He is a much more complicated subject to decode.
Tyler’s lyrics about rape can be seen as a rejection of his queerness. They can be seen as a projected masculinity in response to the inner turmoil of being in the closet. How do we let an artist grow and evolve, while taking their track record into account? When Jay-Z put out 4:44, it showed a more vulnerable side of him that recognized his previous sexism, and apologized to his wife and daughter, while also recognizing his mother’s journey as a closeted lesbian. Jay-Z’s apology doesn’t necessarily excuse his past, it just speaks to his growth as a person and an artist.
But Tyler’s new album does nothing to apologize for his sexism. The album does expose us to an undeniably vulnerable and conflicted side of Tyler, and it contributes something important to the typically hyper-masculine and straight canon of hip-hop. But unless he apologizes, he remains a misogynist.
