‘Yonkers’: The dumb song Tyler The Creator made as a joke
Tyler The Creator has produced many songs in his career, and the IGOR creator puts a lot of time and energy into making sure his songs have meaning, especially on his albums. However, one of his early songs was created as a joke.
Despite the track initially being made as a joke, it has since become a fan favourite. ‘Yonkers’ appeared on Tyler The Creator’s sophomore album, Goblin and was released as the project’s second single. Released in 2011, while Tyler was still the frontman of his Los Angeles collective Odd Future, Goblin was released through the independent UK label XL Recordings.
Still, he was just as experimental with his production in 2011 as he is now, and during a 2016 conversation with fellow West Coast rapper Vince Staples on GOLF Radio, Tyler The Creator explained how the song wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. The rapper began, “N*ggas don’t know that that beat was made as a joke.”
The emcee then unveiled his true intentions, explaining to Staples, “I was trying to make a shitty New York beat, and we was just rapping like we was from New York like we were r*tarded,” adding, “And then, I just had some random verses, and I was just like, ‘I’ll just record it to this beat, this beat is kinda cool.’ And then n*ggas really liked it. That’s so nuts because that shit was actually a fucking joke. I made that beat in literally eight minutes.”
‘Yonkers’ heard the Call Me If You Get Lost creator rap about stabbing Bruno Mars, crashing BoB’s plane and saying “fuck” Hayley Williams. The explicit and edgy lyrics drew in a rowdy, young audience similar to that of Eminem, who was renowned for his explicit rhymes.
Due to ‘Yonkers’ popularity, Tyler The Creator made what is now considered a classic music video. The self-directed visuals see him eating a cockroach and committing suicide at the end. However, during an interview with Interview Magazine, he revealed there was no deep meaning behind what was being shown on screen.
Opening up about the video, Tyler explained, “A lot of people think that stuff is deeper than it really is. Some people just think too much. My manager knows I wanna be a video director, so he was like, ‘Hey, just write a video, write the treatment for it, and we’ll shoot it.’ So I was like, ‘All right, fuck it. I’ll eat a cockroach, I’ll throw up, and then I’ll hang myself.'”
The ‘Oldie’ rapper asserted that there were no subliminal messages or secret meanings. Instead, he merely made something he thought would look interesting. Emphasising this, he explained to Interview, “I just like doing shit that I think is cool, and people happen to like it, so I’m pretty fortunate for that,”
He added, “So I’m gonna just continue to be myself and do what I like. Again, people are just so quick to judge shit ’cause they don’t understand it. But I understand what I’m doing, and that’s all that should matter.”
Since its release, ‘Yonkers’ has been streamed over 249million times and is still one of the emcee’s fan favourites.