The moment Tyler, The Creator knew he needed to quit weed: “I was fucked up, crying”
Weed plays a significant role within hip-hop culture, but that doesn’t mean everyone involved uses it. Tyler, the Creator, for one, doesn’t touch the stuff.
It wasn’t always so, as he explained to Fader back in 2015. Tyler has been high in the past, and his friends like to smoke, but he came to decide that it wasn’t for him. As he recalled during this conversation, he hadn’t gotten high since New Year’s Eve in 2009.
On that special occasion, Tyler ate a weed brownie. It did not go well. The rapper had the “worst time” of his life, and it put him off for good.
“I was fucked up, crying, wanted to die,” he recalled of that last high. “This brain isn’t supposed to have anything.”
He claimed that he can’t even take antihistamines without getting a little woozy, staring up at the sky and slurring things like, “Ohh shit, the sky is so blue, oh my God, look at the skyyyyy.” Drugs, for whatever reason, just don’t sit right with him.
While that interview took place more than a decade ago, it seems Tyler’s aversion to drugs has stayed with him into the present. Last year he appeared on Hot 97 to promote his album Don’t Tap The Glass, whereupon he started talking on air about his “wild life.”
Given his reputation for clean living, at least in terms of his relationship to substances, the hosts questioned what he meant by that. He explained that, as a famous touring musician, his schedule is all over the place, which is why he has such a “wild” life. He remains, meanwhile, free from drink and drugs.
“No smoke,” he confirmed. “I’ve never been drunk in my life. Nothing, I have no interest in it.”
He joked that in maybe a decade or so, he and his “wifey on the boat” might think, “Fuck it, let’s do that,” before taking some MDMA, but, for the time being, he has absolutely no desire to do so. He claimed to prefer staying in, playing games, watching films, and baking cookies, rather than partying.