Hey, everyone. Kerthony Plunktano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and Tyler, the Creator is getting canceled.

Oh, my God. Oh, no. Not Tyler, the Creator. He's my favorite man. What music am I going to listen to?

So, yeah, just in case you guys have not been on the internet for the past 48 hours or so, Tyler, the Creator fans have been having a bit of a rough time, mostly because he is getting dragged left and right, not just for past statements and tweets that he's posted, lyrics that have turned up on older albums of his and his discography that tended to run much edgier than the records he drops these days. I mean, have you seen some of those old, Odd Future bars? They were nuts.

Anyway, it's very interesting to see a lot of this discourse unfold because clearly there are at least some Tyler, the Creator fans today who are maybe newer to him and his catalog. And as a result, they're just not really fully aware of the things he used to say and the lyrics he used to write. Either that or they are now looking at that time period with more mature, 20/20 vision and thinking, "Hold on now. Wait a second."

Now look, I'll say from my own personal experience as somebody who was an active music reviewer during this point in time, a lot of either those older Odd Future or Tyler records, in my opinion, were really not that good, or in my opinion, they just have aged horrendously. And on top of that, at the moment that Odd Future was first blowing up and becoming the hot music media commodity that they were for a number of years, it was very, very, very difficult covering and talking about their stuff, even positively, frankly, because a lot of the time when I would talk about Tyler's or the collective's music, it often would come with insane waves of hate and harassment, unlike the coverage I would do at the time for any other artist.

And this goes beyond your average angry music, fandom mob reaction. There were moments in my YouTube back catalog where all these little Odd Future fans were literally throwing swastikas in my comments over the fact that they knew I was in an interracial relationship. Like, shit was nuts. Put on top of that, the stuff Tyler used to say about fellow musicians and artists on a regular basis on Twitter and all the nonstop headlines about him constantly day in and day out. Around the time, Tyler really was a scourge of the internet.

However, that time is mostly gone. And these days when I cover Tyler's music or I see discourse around his music, the reaction is much more sensible. It seems like his fan base has done a lot of changing and maturing and growing. And when you actually look at the man's art, and I think this is apparent to a lot of people, he has done a lot of changing and growing, too.

It's interesting because I think that change and that growth is what has caused a lot of people when they are going back and looking at his old stuff and maybe catching some of these old tweets he posted back in 2012, '13, '14. It's causing them to just be straight up shocked because they're thinking like, "Whoa, this is my favorite artist. This is one of my favorites right here saying this. This does not align with my perception of the person I am such a big fan of now."

And I will admit, even as someone who has been covering Tyler and his music for a long time, there are some images and pieces of information coming to light that I wasn't even aware of because even though I was aware of Odd Future, I wasn't in the Odd Future trenches like a fan. So it I'll be honest, I was not stumbling across photos of Tyler in what seems like Ku Klux Klan robes.

For a lot of people, stumbling across this discourse and adding to this the fact that there were some offensive images that were incorporated in early Odd Future merch and stuff like that. It's all sending a very strange message at certain angles, not because the reappropriation and contextualization of offensive symbols is wrong or inherently bad for an artist to do. But it's clear the implementation here actually lacks the satirization and the context that would actually educate people on these symbols in a way that actually communicates their history and their impact and their significance, instead of potentially desensitizing people to them. I'm not here to say who should and should not be offended by any of this, especially as a white person.

Let's rewind for a second, though, because seemingly a lot of this discourse is over a tweet, it appears. Not a tweet, Tyler, quote, or retweet, but liked. And it says, "Tyler's fan base hates black music despite Tyler himself having a very deep love and appreciation for it. The dude has Charlie Wilson, Erykah Badu, DJ Drama, et cetera, collaborations, and they still refuse to engage with black art on any meaningful level. Very cannibalistic."

And again, Tyler liked this tweet, presuming that he must I've felt this person was saying something valid, voicing a valid criticism. And the responses to this were not great because it caused a lot of people to recall, well, aren't things with your fan base that way because you're not really challenging them and maybe instead making them feel comfortable with certain biases around race through comments you have either made in your music or in interviews in the past.

Going back some of these interviews and tweets, some of which at the time I did my best to avoid because, again, I'm sure a lot of older people will recall, but I will say personally, as somebody who had to cover Tyler's music and stuff on a regular basis, this 2012 involved, like 2014 period was just constant Tyler/Odd Future, inundation. It was just so dense that you really could be fucking consuming Odd Future-related content all day.

And yeah, again, many of them have not aged well. And honestly, weren't really a good look at the time. But I feel like one of the only reasons Tyler skated by was because, again, he was so young when he was saying a lot of this stuff, and people chalked a lot of his behavior up to just acting out and misbehaving and just not really knowing how to conduct himself in the limelight.

That's the thing. I feel like we need to, at least a little bit, appreciate the fact that Tyler's career and his position on the music scene is just so amazingly unique because not only did he blow up so young, but he did so in such a way to where it's clear he had so little in terms of any filter or control or curation being put over him preventing him from stepping on these figurative rakes over and over and over. Instead of playing it careful and thoughtful, these offensive elements of his personality and his worldview were instead just made his brand. It wasn't great.

And again, my feelings on much of this is echoed in my reviews of his work at the time, because who is Tyler without the context around Tyler? With that being said, though, with this discourse dying down a little bit now over the weekend, the question is, where do we go forward from here? Because, again, clearly, a lot of people are shocked and looking at Tyler a different way now that they are seeing a lot of this stuff for the first time.

And I'll remind people once more, I'm not here to say who can and can't be offended at any of this or make whatever choice they want to make in terms of whether or not they continue to engage with what Tyler does from here. But it is still clear as fucking day that this man, the man that we see today, the man who just dropped Don't Tap the Glass, that is so very clearly a different man that we knew when this guy was dropping Goblin. Not a completely different person, but for sure a very different person.

I want to stress, though, not a perfect person, not the best person in the world, not like, morally speaking, a perfect fucking angel, because I feel like that's an unreasonable standard that we shouldn't be holding anybody to, but clearly still a different person who has done a lot of growing and changing over that 10 plus year period. If Tyler's perspective hadn't actually changed on a lot of these issues that he was talking about in tweets, interviews, and so on and so forth. I don't think he would be liking a tweet like this in 2025.

So while I think it would be destructive and a waste to basically interact with Tyler and treat him as if he is the exact same person today who said these things just five minutes ago. And I don't think people need to be banging down his door, begging for him to just apologize and grovel on his knees for all of it. If the picture this tweet Tyler has liked here is a perspective he agrees with, sees truth in, personally, I think he should take it upon himself or just enact a bit of responsibility here in terms of maybe going the extra mile to challenge and engage your fans in such a way to where they are reaching outside of their comfort zones.

Look, I'll say in my own experience, it can be difficult leading a horse to water and getting them to drink because my entire job is recommending things, getting people to check things out. A lot of that stuff is very conceptual music, very experimental music, music that has deep roots in black history. And yeah, unfortunately, the people who watch me, they don't always take the hint as much as I would like them to. But still, you could at least try. And I don't see Tyler doing a whole lot of trying on that front.

As far as challenging and engaging with his audience in a way that seems almost like a little bit confrontational, the most of that I've seen him do in recent years is just doing more songs where he's talking about how weird paranoid he feels over just how obsessed some people are with him, trying to force themselves upon him or into his life in a way that he doesn't consent to, which, yeah, sure, that's all well and valid and true. But if you can challenge your fans on that front, there are certainly fronts they could be challenged on in regards to black music at large.

So again, while I don't think Tyler needs to be dog-piled on over every single thing he's done or posted or said on the internet a decade ago, I do think he and his brand could do with basically basically coming out either artistically or just verbally explaining to some of his followers how maybe his views have changed over the years. Because personally, I will say it does rub me the wrong way a little bit when I see recent lyrics or statements from him about feeling annoyed over being pushed to make public political statements or stand for a cause, this and that.

I get how for an artist or a media personality, doing that thing could be bad for your brand. But seemingly, that sort of thing was totally okay with Tyler when it was statements and perspectives that he was giving that were very edgy and dismissive. But now that his views have most likely shifted a little bit, he's just quieter about it now. I presume maybe on some level, the reason that that is is because Tyler could be afraid of even more the fallout that might occur as a result of making his longtime fans feel more uncomfortable just living in these biases without second-guessing them.

I'll tell you, from my own personal experience, I love making right-wingers feel uncomfortable in my shit. Some shock humor and statements here and there is one thing, but tying it into your whole political ideology is fucking stupid. I'm going to vote for a Republican because I saw a meme? I would rather kill myself.

So again, while I don't think Tyler needs to be torn down and boycotted or anything along those lines, if he does actually feel as strongly as he does from this little like here that people may be reading into a bit much, know knows? He could be doing more to challenge some of his more sheltered fans to look outside of their narrow worldview, which is honestly one of the privileges of having a platform. You get to tell people about things that they might not have known about otherwise.

So, yeah, if it matters, tell them, shout it from the mountaintops. And I don't know, I'm going to leave it there. Let me know your thoughts about all of this in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, Tyler, the Creator, forever.