How Being a Fan of Tyler, The Creator Molded Me and Maybe an Entire Generation
Tyler made me love rap music. Being brought up in what was then a strict Christian household, I wasn’t allowed to listen to hip hop. Gospel music was all I knew, and I was becoming sick of it. I always liked and understood the concept of Christianity but was heavily uninterested in the church environment. My father is a deacon and my mother is a minister. When your parents were pressuring you to be something, you either deny it or become. I chose the former. I wanted to get away from something I wasn’t completely comfortable with. In my 11th year of life, I found my unexpected answer.
One day I was watching MTVJams, a program that I don’t think exists anymore for obvious reasons. The channel usually played your run of the mill Chris Brown and Drake music videos. Shortly speaking, it isn’t the best place to discover new, progressive music. Suddenly, I see a black shadow sitting in a chair. Creepy and unsettling music was playing in the background which made my eyes glue to the television. I don’t recall blinking during the first minute. Throughout the video, the rapper was cradling a huge cockroach in his hand to eventually end up devouring it. My young mind wasn’t just disgusted by the imagery, but it was his lyrics that disturbed me the most. Brutal lines like “telling Jesus to quit b*tching, “stabbing Bruno Mars,” and the excessive use of extremely harsh profanities made me freeze in fear. The end of the video featured him hanging himself. I believed he was the devil himself.
The horrific image of him hanging was stained in my mind for the next 24 hours. My curiosity got the best of me. I got on the internet and searched terms like “roach-eating rapper” and “suicide rapper.” After the few tries, I found the name Tyler, The Creator along with the infamous music video, “Yonkers.” I also discovered he had one mixtape to his name called Bastard and is the head a hip-hop called Odd Future. I ventured into his entire catalog and fell in love with his music. His music was full of anger and frustration which I could relate to as a preteen. From the process of puberty to my parents impending divorce, Tyler’s music was the outlet I needed at the time. I still wasn’t comfortable with how he expressed his atheism by chastising religion or how he rapped about rape, but the music was a perfect medium for the resistance of my parental guidance.
I was a superfan. I ran a Tumblr blog that followed Tyler and his career endeavors. The era when Tyler released his debut album, Goblin, was arguably the best time to be an Odd Future fan. My first few years of middle school comprised of Tyler. Of course, this obsession was due to the impressionability of young kids, but I took great pride in being a fan. Any negative critiques of him made furious. As a whole, Odd Future fans were passionately rebellious and disrespectful toward cancerous authorities because it was all that the rap group preached. The consensus was “f*ck the system,” but at the same time, they were all about telling people to do what they love and not care what anybody thinks. That is why Tyler was shocking the world like he was. He made it clear that the only person that dictated his success was him.
Fast forward to 2013, the year when he released his sophomore album, Wolf. He gave fans compassionate songs about love and his last goodbye to his fatherless woes. It had far less of an angry tone than any of his preceding projects. It was more so a look into how he was developing in adulthood with so much more responsibilities. The look of his fanbase was changing too. It went from annoying white men that would call you the n-word on Twitter to pretty black girls in flower crowns. Not automatically, but it was a smoother transition than I would have ever thought would happen. It’s highly likely that those kinds of girls were also mad at the world listening at the same age as was.
In late 2014, my sister bought me two Tyler tickets for me and my friend as a birthday present. Unfortunately, the “Yonkers” is still his most popular song. My mother the video, and also thought he was the devil personified. This surprised me. I forgot completely the type of person that Tyler mistakenly perceived himself to be on that song. Tyler’s music has progressed by not just lighter production, but lighter lyrical content. There was no way I was ever going to go to that concert.
His 2015 release, Cherry Bomb, was Tyler at his happiest. The happiness was a contagion to his fans. The project had virtually no type of negative energy at all. Despite that, some fans didn’t like the turn of events. They missed the old, as they were still miserable and needed someone to relate to them. They weren’t able to make the emotional and mental progressions Tyler was able to. That’s not necessarily their fault, but their dislike came from the peace of mind he was in rather than the overall quality of the actual music. He lost those Goblin-era fans, but able to make new ones at the same time. The people Tyler helped grow out of their sadness had stuck around. There are not a lot of transformative artists out there like Tyler. There are not a lot of transformative fans like Tyler’s.
Now we are in 2017. He’s set to release his fourth studio album, Flower Boy on July 21st. By the look of the singles, he is still as joyous as ever. Being a Tyler, the Creator fan throughout has helped tremendously with my character. He taught me the strides you can make as a person and how I shouldn’t let anyone stop me from achieving my dreams. My introduction to hip-hop was with Tyler. I thank for that because it taught me how much of a strong effect it can have on lives. I’m happy he is making music that truthfully reflects him as a person now.
