More than a lot of people in hip-hop, Tyler The Creator is somebody who puts every creative fiber into his work and continues to push boundaries with his music. So, when he sees rappers taking an easy path or disrespecting the work, it bothers him.
“I don’t want to seem like a hater — sometimes I have hater energy, because I just think I’m that good. […] I love this art form so much, bro, and there’s so many n****s out right now that aren’t musicians, that are getting treated like musicians because they make meme records. [They will] publicly be like, ‘I don’t give a f*ck about music, I just do this sh*t for money.’ It’s a Spider-Man meme of, like, the next n****. When every publication is like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s put that out,’ you taking up space for n****s like me.”
On a lighter note, Tyler was recently the victim of a Billie Eilish prank. She called him and told him that she had pooped her pants while on a date (she hadn’t, of course), and his immediate response was, “Fire. Honestly? Fire. You deserve it.”
Hip-hop’s global importance is often talked about, but what often goes overlooked in those discussions is just how integral photography has been to its rise — and its continued authenticity as a culture. It’s so hard for hip-hop to be completely co-opted or corporatized because its rise has been documented so heavily by those within it.
Take Sagan Lockhart, for instance. Once a humble apparel salesman in Los Angeles’ fabled fashion district, Fairfax, Lockhart’s interest in photography led to him becoming the unofficial photographer for Odd Future as they rose to stardom, terrorizing local skate shops and sending parents clutching for their pearls. Now, the group’s members have Grammys (Tyler The Creator has a Best Rap Album award for each of his last two albums) and could potentially be adding Emmys to their prestigious collections (former member Lionel Boyce is up for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series award for The Bear).
With all that success ahead of them, though, there’s no better time to look back at their beginnings — which is what Lockhart’s first book, I Don’t Play does. After hosting a jam-packed launch party sponsored by Zig-Zag rolling papers brand, Lockhart jumped on a Zoom call with Uproxx to break down the process for his book, the LA underground’s skate shop epicenter, and what it means to have captured history in the making.
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What made you want to put out a photo book now, and what went into specifically using Odd Future stuff for it?
It was just a project that a lot of people had been asking for over the years. Some friends of mine started a publishing company, and the way that they presented it to me just made it seem pretty seamless and easy for me to get done finally after all these years, so I was like, “Yeah, sure, let’s do it.” I was kind of just expecting to just make 10 copies, but it went a little bit crazier than that.
I started taking photos probably around ’09, 2010, and that’s when I was working on Fairfax and all the Odd Future stuff was going on, so I kind of just learned how to take photos with them as a lot of the first subjects. It wasn’t this intentional thing of making this book around Odd Future. It’s just that a lot of my earlier photos from this time period that I was showcasing in there just happens to be a lot of them. There’s other experiences and places and people that I wanted to show in the book that I was also shooting, and all of that is in there, but from 2010 to 2013, which is the bulk of the book, there was a lot of Odd Future stuff going on. It wasn’t like this intentional, “Let’s make an Odd Future book.” That’s just what life was at the time.
What did you take away from the launch party?
If one person comes to something that I’m doing, it’s just a reminder that like, “Okay, I’m doing something cool,” but when hundreds of people come to your thing? I was just overwhelmed with gratitude, and to have the support from my friends and new friends, and the event space, and [publicist] Pristina helping out, and especially Zig-Zag supporting the event and coming through with their people. Just super stoked on the way that it turned out, for sure. Definitely super thankful from our sponsors and Zig-Zag for helping out with that.
When did you get interested in photographing or documenting your experiences?
My interest in photography stems from… My godfather was a photographer for Hustler and sh*t like that, so I was always like, “Man, this job was dope. I like what this guy does.”
I’m sure any kid would
When I was younger, I think every young skateboarder, you want to be a professional skateboarder, but as I was getting older, and wanting to do other things, and seeing that maybe that route was not a possibility for me, I was already stoked for working for these street wear and skate adjacent brands, but I was like, “Maybe a skate photographer or something would be dope to do.” A friend of mine just gave me this old 35 millimeter camera, and he was like, “Yo, you want to take photos? Just play around with this and just see where you want to go.”
I want to know what timeframe you were going over there at, just out of curiosity?
Probably around the same time, but just in the interest of like, “Oh, I want to get this Hundred shirt and be out.” I was never like, “Let me hang out, let me kick it.” I was a sneaker kid, so that was what I was always trying to get… I was more on Melrose than Fairfax, honestly.
To me, during this time period, Fairfax was a little bit more… Maybe more of a secret. I mean, La Brea had been around forever. Union was the spot we would go to as kids, and then there was Undefeated and Stussy over there, and then Supreme started the new wave on Fairfax, but this is all very pre-internet.
I was working a full-time job over there, so it was like, “I don’t think I would go out of my way to go shoot Fairfax,” but I was there for 40 hours a week, so I didn’t have a choice. It was like, “I guess this is where I’m going to take photos at.” But from the jump, there was already people hanging out. My first gig over there, before I was at Diamond and met the Odd Future guys, I was working at The Hundreds. Dom Kennedy was hanging out every single day. Nas would come in. Nipsey [Hussle] would kick it all the time. There was already just all these characters that I was lucky enough to be around and just talk with, so it was super natural that when I got the camera to just start shooting whoever was around me.
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When you look at the photos from that time period, and then you look at how it’s evolved, what’s your overall impression of the changes that have been made, or how things look different and how much things look the same?
When I do look at it, I’m like, “Damn, all these people went on to do really, really great things.” Without them going on to do that with their lives, I don’t think the book would be as impactful, so I guess that’s what I think when I look at it. I’m like, “Damn, Lionel was just chilling with us, but now he’s up for an Emmy in acting.” That was never a thought in my mind at that time period.
There’s some photos in there where it’s, like there’s a couple old Fairfax shops in there where it’s like, “These businesses are just not there, and it’s going to look completely different.” There’s probably some show photos in there where you’re like, “Oh, this looks like the same exact that I see today.” To be a part of something and some music history, even the smallest scale of where I’m at, just super thankful. A lot of these dudes I just grew up idolizing and listening to, and knowing their albums word for word as a kid. To be a part of that in some capacity, like I’m saying, I’m just super thankful for it.
What do you want people to take away from the book, from the documentation of these experiences?
If I had to split it into two things, I would say for the people who were there, or for the fans from around the world who were looking at this under a microscope at that time, I would hope that they look at it and it kind of brings them back to that time period, and just like, “Oh sh*t, I remember this,” or gives them some sort of positive feelings.
Then for the younger crowd of the people who weren’t there, maybe it just shows them maybe what they missed out on. I got people messaging me about this, and they’re 15, 16, and I’m like, “Damn, you were literally born when this stuff was first going on.” So maybe I hope that y’all look at it, and it just shows you this time period that you missed out on just because you were hella young.
They can take from that. They can learn things like, don’t let anyone stop you. Pursue, pursue. Do the thing that sounds crazy, even if everybody calls you crazy. My guy Shake used to complain about Tyler all the time, because Tyler was terrorizing his blog 2DopeBoyz at the time, and he was just like, “Yeah, that kid’s annoying. But man, he’s a genius. He’s so smart.”
I think that the industry needed and still needs a personality that f*cking strong. Because if he wasn’t so intense, he wouldn’t be making those waves worldwide like that. We didn’t need a humble individual at the time. There’s already some of those. We needed something very strong and crazy like that to shake things up.
Tyler, The Creator has proven again and again that he is an artist’s artist. He truly tries to evolve and experiment with sounds, textures, and genres, to bring a different listening experience to each project. It’s why he’s become one of the biggest names in hip-hop, especially over the last several years or so. It’s been quite a bit since we got a new project from the California chameleon, with CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST being the most recent in 2021. We did get the extended version, The Estate Sale in 2023, but not a truly fresh and separate LP. We are going to hear him collaborate with A$AP Rocky again when DON’T BE DUMBdrops on August 30.
While we continue to hope for new music, Tyler, The Creator is sharing some pretty blunt comments/opinions on the current landscape of hip-hop. This is nothing new as he is going to speak out if he feels passionate about something. In this case, the IGOR creator is putting a lot of the new rappers on blast for not respecting the art form and thus do not deserve the musician title. In a repost from NFR Podcast, the clip sees Tyler sitting down with Maverick Carter, a close friend and collaborator of LeBron James.
He hosts his own show called Mavericks which is produced by Bron and Mav’s media company, SpringHill. His sit-down with Tyler will air on YouTube tomorrow, August 14, according to the teaser. In the short preview, he says, “There are so many n****s out right now who aren’t musicians, that are getting treated like musicians because they make meme records”, he states. Later, Tyler adds, “[They] publicly will be like, ‘I don’t give a f*** about music, I just do this s*** for money’”. Hilariously, at the end of the video, there’s an audio bite of Tyler saying that someone’s going to take this out of context. We will have to wait to hear the full conversation, but it seems pretty clear cut to us that Tyler doesn’t have a lot of respect for this new wave of talent.
What are your thoughts on Tyler, The Creator’s feelings toward the new crop of rappers? Do you think he makes a valid point, why or why not? Are you going to tune into this episode of MaverickswithMav Carter? We would like to hear what you have to say, so leave your thoughts in the comments. Additionally, always keep it locked in with HNHH for all of the latest news surrounding Tyler, The Creator. Finally, stay with us for everything else going on in the music world.
Out of all of the hyped-up album releases for hip-hop in 2024, A$AP Rocky’s DON’T BE DUMB is very high on a lot of people’s lists. There was some hope that it would come last year but if we’re being honest, people have been waiting on some sort of project from him for years. Of course, the last full-length studio project we got was 2018’s Testing. But it seems that fans of his are finally going to get their hands on it soon, as Rocky announced it was going to be out on August 30 via a short teaser trailer. There has been some info in regard to the producers that are going to be on it, but not so much in terms of the rappers and singers. That is until yesterday when A$AP Rocky previewed a snippet that sees him working alongside his dear friend, Tyler, The Creator.
According to NFR Podcast, the New Yorker gave attendees at his DON’T BE DUMB listening party some sneak peeks of the album. This one seems to be making all the noise right now, as you can audibly hear Tyler in the clip below. From what it sounds like, the production appears to be pretty atmospheric, a signature of Rocky’s aesthetic. If this album and song see a release, it would be the longtime duo’s first in just about a year.
It would be a successor to “WHARF TALK”, a Tyler, The Creator track off of the Estate Sale version of CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST. Overall, this a tandem known for dropping consistent levels of greatness whenever their talents collide. Records like “Who Dat Boy”,“Potato Salad”, and “Telephone Calls” are all fire in their own way, and we can only imagine this DON’T BE DUMB joint will be more of the same. Hopefully, though, we do in fact wake up to the LP on “AWGEST 30TH”.
What are your thoughts on this new A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator snippet? Do you think this will be one of their best team-ups, why or why not? Will Rocky actually drop DON’T BE DUMB on August 30? Who else do you want to see him work with on this album? We would like to hear what you have to say, so leave your thoughts in the comments. Additionally, always keep it locked in with HNHH for all of the latest news surrounding A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator. Finally, stay with us for everything else going on in the music world.
Tyler, The Creator has built his persona on being a troll. He loves to get a rise out of people, and that includes interviewers. The Odd Future founder has a very particular sense of humor, which seems to be why he’s developed such a strong bond with Billie Eilish. The two artists have nothing but nice things to say about each other. However, Eilish pulled a fast one during a recent interview with Elle Magazine. She decided to call Tyler, The Creator, and convince him that she was in deep trouble.
Billie Eilish doesn’t get far into the bit without laughing. That being said, she does try to sell the idea that she defecated in her pants during a date, and she needs Tyler’s help. “Honestly,” the rapper said. “Fire.” Eilish cracks up at the rapper’s flippant answer, but keeps going with the story. She claims to be close to Tyler, The Creator’s house, and asks whether she can come by. Tyler is baffled. “Uh, I’m in Atlanta,” he revealed. Eilish asks whether she can go to his L.A. property, shower, and borrow some clothes, and he agrees. Not, however, before giving her a hard time for what happened. Billie Eilish eventually pulls the rug out from under Tyler, The Creator and admits the call was a prank.
Tyler, The Creator took the whole thing in stride. “That’s amazing,” he can be heard saying over the phone. “That’s the content they’re doing for journalism, now?” Eilish apologizes, and Tyler cracks a few more jokes before hanging up. As absurd as the whole prank call is, Eilish has made it clear that she has an adoration for Tyler, The Creator and what he represents. During a 2020 interview with NME, the pop star claimed that Tyler was the most influential artist in her life.
“Everybody knows Tyler has inspired every part of everything about me,” Eilish claimed. “Basically, I’ve been a fan of Tyler’s forever, and I never really got to listen to all of this album [IGOR].” Tyler, The Creator has returned the praise. During a 2019 chat with Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe, the rapper admitted that he wanted to work with Eilish. “I like her,” he admitted. “I think she’s, I just want her to just keep doing her damn thing. [I’d] want to work with her. I don’t know what the f*ck we would make…” Hopefully we’ll get to hear what these two will make in the future.
Elle does a video series called “Phoning It In,” where they get their celebrity guest to prank call some of their famous contacts. Billie Eilish is the latest participant, and her call to Tyler The Creator is pure gold.
The show gives Eilish some prank prompts to go with, but she got to do her own prank idea for Tyler. So, she decided to tell him she was calling him from the bathroom on a date because she pooped her pants.
Tyler was on one right away, as he answered the call, “‘Sup, gay man?” After Eilish fed him the poop lie, he quickly responded, “Fire. Honestly? Fire. You deserve it.”
Eilish, through laughter, told Tyler she didn’t know what to do and asked if she could go to his house. He eventually said yes before wanting to go over the poop story again. Eilish told him she thought it was a fart, and he replied, “Bro, you don’t… you don’t stop once you feel it?”
She then gave up the gag and told him he was being pranked. After some silence, Tyler responded, “That’s amazing. That’s the content that they’re doing for journalism now? Nice.” He added, “Look, I sharted like two months ago.”
The overall theme of that and Eilish’s other prank calls is the prank victims were all very kind. Margot Robbie was super supportive in trying to help Eilish find a new place to shoot a music video, her label head Justin Libliner looked out for Eilish’s well being when she told him she wanted to quit music, and Dakota Johnson did her best to help when Eilish wanted advice about being cast to play a baby in a movie.
The whole video’s pretty fun, so check it out above.
Sexyy Red is on the rise. The rapper has linked up with some of the biggest names in the genre, including Chief Keef, Nicki Minaj and Drake. These collabs have resulted in crossover smashes, but Sexyy has yet to realize her dream collab. Or should we say, has yet to release it. The rapper was asked which artist she would like to work with if given the chance during Wireless Festival. She not only named the artist, but she told fans that the collab had already taken place.
“I did my dream collab, finally,” Sexyy Red told the Wireless reporter. “Tyler, The Creator.” It’s hard to imagine what a blending of the two rappers’ styles would sound like. That being said, Sexyy Red has made a point of emphasizing her artistry recently. She discussed her process, and the hate that she’s gotten, during an appearance on HBO’s The Shop. It was here that she admitted to having confidence issues. “I [get] nervous meeting people because I’m a shy person,” she explained. “And I [didn’t] know [what] he was going to be like. I don’t [care] what people think about me.”
Controversy is something that Tyler, The Creator is familiar with. Similar to Sexyy Red, Tyler was subject to criticism and backlash early in his career to his lyrical subject matter. It’s easy to see why Sexyy Red feels such a kinship with the “EARFQUAKE” rapper. Sexyy Red did not reveal when her collaboration with Tyler, The Creator would be released. Both Sexyy and Tyler are coming off recent releases, and Tyler is not expected to drop again until 2025. Hopefully we get the untitled collab sooner rather than later, though.
Sexyy Red and Tyler, The Creator have known each other for a while. The two actually met during Drake’s Los Angeles concert in 2023. Red was the opener, and she got the chance to pose for photos with Tyler after her set. The former posted the photos, as well as a video of her and Tyler hugging, on Twitter. “My dreams came true,” she wrote in the caption. The photos went semi-viral, and the Odd Future rapper poked fun at himself as a result. “Been hiding it but cat is out the bag,” he wrote on Instagram. “I got a bbl this is not photoshop.” The comment proved to be fitting, since Drake would eventually collab with Sexyy Red over the “BBL Drizzy” beat.
During last night’s BET Awards ceremony, Donald Glover — who was there to present the award for Album Of The Year — took a bit of a digression during his time onstage to call out the show for never nominating him. Indeed, it’s one of the first times the network has even acknowledged Glover’s existence, and the fact he was also allowed to plug his quirky new film Bando Stone And The New World is probably a testament to the concessions BET’s programmers had to make to soothe his bruised ego over the years of neglect.
“This isn’t personal, but I just feel like I should have more BET awards,” Glover said. “I’m serious. It’s the Black Entertainment Television Awards. How much more entertaining do I have to do? Because it’s just the math of the fact. It doesn’t really make sense. I have more Grammys than Will Smith, which makes no sense, but I have the same amount of BET awards as Sam Smith.” Smith and Glover both have one BET Award each; Glover won Best Music Video in 2019 for “This is America”, while Smith won the 2015 award for Best New Artist. I don’t know if you noticed, but Sam Smith… also isn’t Black.
Glover joked that he’d be willing to remake BET Saturday afternoon mainstay Baby Boy if it would get him more recognition from the network. “I’ll have Jonathan Majors put me in a headlock, shave my head, I’ll do it,” he said, referring to a scene in which Ving Rhames puts Tyrese Gibson in a headlock during a heated domestic dispute in the film.
— Well guess what, I’m CP (@TopherPatt) July 1, 2024
Social media users on Twitter noted that Glover has kind of a point — he should not have the same number of BET Awards nominations as Sam Smith, regardless of whether he and Will Smith have the same amount of Grammys — and drew parallels to another recent addition to the BET canon, Tyler The Creator. The Hawthorne, California native also went unacknowledged by the network until 2021, when he was honored with a (the admittedly vaguely titled) Rock The Bells Cultural Influence Award. During an interview about the award, he, too, acknowledged that he felt he “wasn’t accepted by that audience,” but that he held a deep reverence for the network growing up.
“I was so hype to perform at the BET Awards,” Tyler admitted. “I just never felt like my style of music would ever have been, not even appreciated, but allowed on there. And because of that, I would mock it. It was like a defense mechanism because I felt like I wasn’t accepted by that audience. But when they asked me this year, man, I was enthralled. I was so happy.” At first glance, it does appear that artists like Glover and Tyler contrast starkly from the usual BET fare. When they were both in the target demographic for BET’s old video countdown show, 106 & Park, they likely didn’t see themselves reflected in the usual rotation of artists like Soulja Boy, 50 Cent, or Hurricane Chris.
The way BET has left him and Tyler out of most of the convos for such a long time is crazy. https://t.co/319hUs11UC
— Well guess what, I’m CP (@TopherPatt) July 1, 2024
But over the years, they’ve each garnered mainstream acclaim for their creative works, which have always celebrated their Blackness and drawn extensively from deep cultural roots — even if they didn’t reflect the stereotypical looks and concerns promoted by not just BET, but mainstream depictions of Blackness in media in general.
Glover’s groundbreaking work in music and television includes the funk-soul revival album Awaken, My Love! and his paradigm-shifting dramedy Atlanta, which often addressed ongoing current events and made references to Black lifestyle deep cuts like the “haunted” Lake Rainier in his native Georgia. Meanwhile, Tyler’s multihyphenate takeover of hip-hop, fashion, and animation with albums like Igor, shows like The Jellies!, and his history-making collaboration with Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton, centered Blackness and posited a broader spectrum of possibilities for it. You can’t tell me you couldn’t see Carlton Banks decked out in Tyler’s preppy Louis pieces. There are all kinds of alternative expressions of Blackness, and neither artist allowed the fact they didn’t see those expressions on TV stop them from expressing themselves in full.
While it’s clear that BET’s definition of notable Black art is expanding — a net good for a network whose narrow typecasting of Black art has been criticized in the past — neither Glover nor Tyler should ever have fretted. They’ve been two of the most important Black artists of their generation all along. From the beginning, both artists have presented a dazzling, wide-ranging perspective of what Black art can be. Beyond BET, we would all benefit from recognizing those talents — and the talents of others who go against the grain — and letting Black art be more than what we’ve already seen.
Tyler was all over the red carpet for the season 3 premiere of FX on Hulu’s Windy City-set series The Bear on Tuesday. He posed with stars Ayo Edebiri and Lionel Boyce and took out his phone to snap photos.
But why was Tyler at the premiere in the first place? It’s probably because he enjoys quality TV shows. But also, Boyce, who plays pastry chef Marcus, was previously in Odd Future with Tyler. They also co-created the Adult Swim animated series The Jellies!. The Bear has proven to be slightly more popular.
In The Bear season 3, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Edebiri) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) “do what it takes to elevate The Bear, their beef stand turned fine dining establishment, to the highest level, all while doing their best just to stay in business,” according to the official logline. “It’s a losing battle every single day in the restaurant business. Carmy pushes himself harder than ever, and demands excellence from his crew, who do their best to match his intensity.” The new season premieres on FX on Hulu on June 26 at 9 p.m. EST.
Until then, please enjoy Tyler having a blast at the premiere.
PictureGroup for FXGetty ImageGetty ImageGetty Image
Tyler The Creator is entering a different phase of his career. He went from controversial emcee to critical darling to hip-hop icon. His recent performance at Kendrick Lamar’s “Pop Out” show solidified this pivot. Tyler is taking the momentum from that iconic show and carrying it right into his own festival, Camp Flog Gnaw. The festival is turning ten this year, which means the former Odd Future leader will be going above and beyond to make sure fans get their money’s worth.
Tyler announced the dates for Camp Flog Gnaw 2024, fittingly, on June 24. The two-day festival will take place on November 16-17 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The tickets will go on sale Friday, June 28th and the advance ticket sales will go up a day earlier, on June 27th. Camp Flog Gnaw’s website confirms that general admission tickets will be $345 + fees for both days. VIP passes will be $625 + fees, and the Super VIP passes will be $1,695 + fees. The lineup for Camp Flog Gnaw 2024 has yet to be announced. Tyler The Creator’s official festival poster confirmed that the artists will be unveiled at a later date.
Camp Flog Gnaw has had its fair share of iconic moments over the years. Tyler The Creator getting a chance to his interview his idol, Pharrell, in 2014, went viral. There was also the infamous Drake show in 2018. He was Tyler The Creator’s surprise guest, but fans expecting Frank Ocean proceeded to boo the 6 God offstage. Tyler came to Drake’s defense, and criticized fans. “Then when that happened and these motherf**kers is like ‘f*ck you’,” he told BET. “It’s a reflection on me to Aubrey.” The irony, of course, is that Tyler has moved over to team Kendrick Lamar.
Tyler The Creator was praised for bringing the festival back in 2023. The pandemic made it difficult to put on between 2020 and 2022. “Covid f*cked us, bro,” the rapper told the crowd. “Didn’t leave a towel, didn’t call to see if we made it home safe, just f*cked us. But three or four years later, and y’all still care to come.” Tyler also thanked fans for showing support and keeping the festival alive. “To know this random idea I had, brings the spirit of L.A. up for two days,” he explained. “I say this with every bone in my body: Thank you all.”
AUGUST 30TH
