A little over a month ago, Tyler, the Creator found himself under public scrutiny due to the generous amount creative freedom given to the rapper and his Odd Future affiliates in a series of self-produced Mountain Dew ads. While the company immediately removed the highly controversial video from circulation, the 22-year-old rapper and producer is once again in the limelight—this time due to a heated onstage tirade while on tour in Australia.
Pitchfork reports that the rapper's frustration stems mainly from calls by feminist group Collective Shout to the Australian government—the group demanding, among other things, that the rapper's joint Australian tour with OF cohort Earl Sweatshirt be brought to an abrupt halt and his visa revoked—this due to his music's glorification of violence. For those of us that are familiar with Tyler and the Los Angeles rap collective OFWGKTA, this is nothing new: since the release of his first album, Bastard, Tyler has been criticized countless times for his unique, often offensive and ostensibly misogynistic lyrical content.
Australian music site The Music reports that in Sydney, riot police were called to shut down the in-store appearance by Tyler and Earl. This was seemingly due to the extremely crowded nature of the event, which was in part attributed to the presence of some protesters. Tyler responded to the series of events in archetypal all-caps fashion via his twitter account:
Later at a show, the rapper unleashed a slew of extreme and profanity-filled comments supposedly directed at Talitha Stone, a member of Collective Shout who had publicly expressed her disapproval of the artist's presence in Australia on twitter. A video of the rant, uploaded to The Guardian's site, has since circulated and gone viral.
Collective Shout has garnered support from ultra-conservative Australian House of Representatives member, Alex Hawke, who called vehemently for Tyler's penalization and expulsion from the country. As of yet, the rapper-producer has indeed not been shipped out the land down under. Fresh off of the release of his critically acclaimed third album, Wolf, it will certainly be interesting to keep up with Tyler's story as it develops.
Via Pitchfork
