Tyler, The Creator is proudly teetotal, and unlike many others in his position, this isn’t because he has at any point struggled with substance abuse — it’s just never been something he has desired.
Music has always been inextricably linked with drink and drugs for as long as time. This isn’t a genre-specific association, although hip-hop specifically in the last few years could be accused of glamorising opioids. Still, Tyler is somewhat of an anomaly who bucks the trends with everything he does.
Narcotics have simply never interested him. He has experimented with weed on two occasions, but after a bad experience on an edible, the rapper went into early retirement, and he’s never even touched alcohol too.
When he’s at work in the studio, it frustrates Tyler to see his collaborators not taking it as seriously as himself. He operates a strict drug-free policy to ensure everybody else is on his wavelength, and they are taking the creative process seriously.
Speaking to Fantastic Man, he opened up about one experience when he took this strategy into his own hands. “I went in the room and took the blunt out of somebody’s hand, threw it on the ground and stepped on it and said, ‘This is a distraction. This needs to stop. We are here to fucking work. Not to hang out,'” Tyler recalled. “Fuck that. Clear mind. At least once, goddamn. We’re drug-free at night.”
In the same interview, the former Odd Future ringleader also revealed why he’s never had any ambitions to try alcohol. “Why haven’t you wrestled a tiger? I don’t know. I just don’t want to drink,” he said.
“I know that I don’t want to be that drunk guy. But I do know I want to hit a jump on a dirt-bike. I can look at that and say: ‘I want to do that.’ I’ve never seen anyone drunk, like, ‘Damn, I want to be that.’ So, I guess I just naturally got it pushed into my head that I have no reason to go over there and get fucking drunk.”
Tyler’s ruthless mindset is what has helped him become such a mercurial artist, and everyone else around him using substances is only going to make him go further the other way rather than trying to fit in with the crowd.
Anyone who says that drink and drugs are a necessity to push creative boundaries needs to listen to Tyler, The Creator to realise that, in actual fact, that is nothing but a myth.
