Tyler, the Creator - Fuck It

“Tell Australia I’m sneaking in with a mic in my damn hand”, Tyler Okonma warns. On ‘Fuck It’, you’re getting angry Tyler. The Tyler from ‘Bastard’ and ‘Goblin’, the one with the frenetic, breathless flow, from a time where his lyrics would eventually get him banned from Australia and the UK, meeting the ire of feminists and LGBTQ rights campaigners world-wide. There’s the intrinsic irony; ‘Fuck It’ exhibits an anger towards his critics using that same flow; harking back to the time he was harvesting detractors as much as he was attracting rabid fans in Supreme t-shirts and Vans.



Therein lies the difficulty with Tyler, the Creator. Yet again, the beat is HARD. The production he does now makes ‘Bastard’ sound amateurish by comparison (which it was), and builds on the layered, textured sound of ‘Cherry Bomb’. But he does himself absolutely no favours lyrically. You want to root for him yet he’s joking that he can’t be homophobic “’cause his boyfriend’s a fag”.

He’s a walking fuckin’ paradox, y’know? Tyler is angry: he addresses the allegations of racism that met his banning from certain nations, and praises his own production, talking about “writing string sections on my tour bus”. It’s angry, it’s exciting, but unless this is a teaser for something to come, it’s a short riposte that raises as many questions as it does answers.