Tyler, The Creator’s favourite albums of all time
Tyler, the Creator is one of the most exciting young minds in hip-hop, and since the early 2010s, Tyler, the Creator has been bringing us interesting, boundary-pushing music. From Goblin to Flower Boy, the LA rapper has been challenging the status quo for years and hasn’t gone unnoticed. As one of the first members of Odd Future to garner mainstream attention, Tyler, the Creator, is Odd Future’s best-performing artist.
Born and raised in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Ladera Heights, Tyler the Creator was looked after solely by his mother. LA, akin to New York, was experiencing stagnation during the early 2010s. However, Odd Future (often stylised OFWGKTA) would soon put it to an end. Based primarily out of Los Angeles, Odd Future really burst onto the hip-hop scene in 2011. The collective’s distinct look came with a different sound. OFWGKTA were pioneering in the way they effortlessly fused LA Skate culture with hip-hop.
Odd Future seamlessly married the two completely separate entities that, before, would have seemed incompatible. The skateboarding culture came through in how they dressed. They always had skateboards in their hands and Vans shoes on their feet. Furthermore, the crew wore skateboarding clothing brands, brightly coloured tees, and humorous sweatshirts, but somehow, they made it work with hip-hop.
With group projects such as Radical, The Odd Future Tape and The Odd Future Tape Vol 2, the collective was unstoppable when at full throttle. However, when it came to members working on solo projects, only a handful of them managed to gather enough of a cult following while in the crew to sustain a solo career after the collective’s dissolution. Unsurprisingly, Tyler was one of them.
Tyler, Frank Ocean, and Earl Sweatshirt were the only members who successfully emerged from the crew as solo artists. However, the IGOR creator would be the standout artist, receiving vast amounts of critical acclaim for his ability to morph and integrate the sonics of hip-hop into other genres.
With his own festival, Camp Flog Gnaw, and an array of accolades, the Odd Future founder is still strong today. The surprise release of CHROMAKOPIA in 2024 showed he can mobilise his fanbase quickly and doesn’t even have to put much effort into marketing his music, as fans rest assured that any project will be amazing.
The West Coast rapper has a lot of input into his albums and often produces many of the tracks. For his fifth studio album, IGOR, he showed his love for music by tracking down an extremely obscure sample from an English rock band. This made it blindingly obvious that the lyricist has an eclectic taste in music, but on one occasion, he managed to name his top five.
During a segment for the Adobe MAX 2020 Creativity Conference, Tyler revealed Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP is his number one album ever. However, he also expressed his love for Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, N.E.R.D.’s In Search Of… and Pharrell’s 2006 debut project In My Mind. Although he didn’t name a fifth, he has previously shown a lot of love to Kanye West and A Tribe Called Quest as musical inspirations.
The appearance of Eminem on the list shocked many, as Tyler and Em were embroiled in a strange beef for years. During the 2010s, the Flower Boy rhymer expressed his disdain for Eminem’s 2010 project Recovery and various other albums, such as The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and Revival. Still, from his 2020 interview, it seems he has a deep appreciation for Eminem’s early material.
Tyler, The Creator’s favourite albums of all time:
- Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP, (2000)
- Erykah Badu – Mama’s Gun, (2001)
- N.E.R.D. – In Search Of…, (2001)
- Pharrell Williams, In My Mind, (2006)