Why were Odd Future banned from New Zealand?
Odd Future, the hip-hop collective established by a teenage Tyler, the Creator, quickly garnered a controversial reputation for itself. The crew became notorious for its disturbing lyrics that reeked of misogyny, homophobia and violence.
Given the extreme lyrical content of Odd Future’s work, the comparisons to Eminem came thick and fast in the crew’s early days. Em himself seemed to note the similarities, too, and he even brought them with him on tour around the world.
But a problem emerged when the group was set to open for Em in New Zealand in 2014. They were all set to play at a festival in Auckland called Rapture, with Odd Future scheduled to warm up the crowd for Em. It never happened, though, as several of the Odd Future crew couldn’t even make it into the country. Six of them were pushed back at the border.
The Immigration New Zealand agency issued an official statement to explain its decision, claiming that the rappers who were denied entry constituted “a potential threat to public order and the public interest.” There were, the agency asserted, “several reasons” for this conclusion, including previous gigs that Odd Future had played in which “they have incited violence.”
One such gig occurred in Boston in 2011, when witness reports suggested that some of the Odd Future crew had encouraged the crowd to attack cops. This incident was apparently serious enough to warrant the ban, with Karen Urwin, who served as New Zealand’s Border Operations Manager at the time, claiming publicly that the decision had not been taken lightly.
Urwin acknowledged how unusual this situation was, suggesting that people were ordinarily denied entry to New Zealand on the grounds of racist extremism. White supremacist group leaders and famous Holocaust deniers were usually the sorts of people denied entry in the country, not “people who used swear words.” But Odd Future’s past rhetoric had been deemed sufficiently dangerous to warrant a ban.
This was not the first time Odd Future had experienced difficulties in New Zealand. In 2011, the same year as the problematic Boston gig had taken place, the crew had also been scheduled to play at Big Day Out festival, which was also in Auckland. But they were removed from the bill before they got the chance to play.
The city’s council had reportedly objected to their lyrics, while another instance of alleged incitement against the police had also taken place around that time. Tyler had been doing an autograph signing at a comic store, when police showed up because of overcrowding. The rapper and two others are reported to have climbed onto the venue’s roof to hurl insults at the cops, which was viewed as incitement.
Tyler, then, has faced plenty of issues with New Zealand’s border authorities, but that’s not all. He was also banned from entering the UK in 2015, on the grounds that his presence in the UK “would not be conducive to the public good.” His words and actions have gotten him into trouble all over the world.