Tyler, The Creator explains why he has so many white friends
Tyler, The Creator has always been unapologetically himself. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks and wears his interests on his sleeve.
It’s the reason why, during his interview with Funk Flex in 2019, Tyler dug deep to find out what the radio host truly loved, no matter how embarrassed he might be. Although it made for awkward (and hilarious) viewing, Tyler left with a newfound respect for him after spreading his own life philosophy.
The Los Angeles rapper struggled to make friends when he was a kid. He was into genres such as jazz and pop-punk that other classmates had no interest in. That didn’t faze him, though. Tyler continued to stick to his unique taste and didn’t stop riding his skateboard because it was deemed “uncool” by others. That same mindset is one of the reasons why he remains one of the most trailblazing musicians making music today.
While often lonely kids are quiet and keep their thoughts to themselves, he was actually the opposite. He was hyper, and people couldn’t understand his sense of humour. “I was a Black skater kid,” he told Spin. “I liked fucking Good Charlotte and Kenny G, and I was Black. And I went to school with a bunch of Black kids, so they kinda swayed away from me. I was such a leader that I just went around by myself. I don’t know, I was thinking differently from others.”
Despite entering the music industry with the gigantic Odd Future collective, he didn’t always have that many people around him. He only met most of the crew when he was 16, spending most of his time with his grandma when his mother moved away. It wasn’t until his later teenage years that he met the majority of his best friends. Many of them are white, and he puts it down to Black people not being open to his interests.
Speaking on those closest to him in 2011, he said, “My best friends today, I never went to school with. Because, real shit, in the Black community, being different is the one thing that’s just like, I guess because of slavery and shit, we just have to stick together and be so strong that being different is taboo. It’s like you can’t think outside the box in the Black community. That’s why I have so many white friends, because, real shit, no one really cares about that. I hate race. I hate that shit.”
Tyler revealed that he was constantly called “white boy” when he was a youngster, which was something that bothered him. Back in the days of Formspring, people would tell him that most of his fans were teenage white kids.
The intended attack confused Tyler, considering most of his friends were, in fact, teenage white kids. “You don’t have to be a certain colour to stand on some wood with wheels on the bottom,” he stated. “But some people are fucking r*tarded, so it’s whatever. I just look past it as much as I can.”