ACREAOR IN TO BLOOM
“I like getting lost, I like that shit. Exploring, makin’ a left turn.” Wearing a red Louis Vuitton cabana shirt, open-toed Golf sandals of his own design, and a bucket hat, Tyler, the Creator cruises his McLaren 675 through Los Angeles while appreciating the view from the port side.
“There’s just a different tone of yellow in the sky today,” he says. Northern California’s wildfires have given everything a permanent tinge of the golden hour. “It’s been like this all day. It’s weird. Like, it’s probably me and five other people who notice it too.”
Tyler weaves between cars and curses at speed-limitabiding minivans and a stalled pickup truck looking like a haute Gilligan while gleefully singing along with every song that plays on his iPhone. It’s a mix of soul-funk and old-school hip-hop, plus some lovely contemporary stuff. Pure Pleasure. Blackstreet. Janet. John Legend. He cues trumpets with a slick point of his finger, accentuates bass drops by jutting out his chin. Fans spot him from the sidewalk or nearby cars and shout, “Tyler!”
“There’s a lot of ’70s music on this playlist,” I say, sure I can almost hear the warm, retro chords of his Grammynominated 2017 album, Flower Boy, somewhere in this mix.
“Oh, it’s just on shuffle,” Tyler says dismissively. He then flips quickly between a few tracks, turns the stereo to max, and I hear the ominous first notes of “Freeee” by Kanye West and Kid Cudi. That’s when, as if by his own will, L.A. traffic drains away, and Tyler floors it.
The engine crescendos into a whir that competes with the speakers, and the world blurs. With each guitar riff, Tyler yanks the steering wheel like a mixer, zigzagging the car in an angry staccato. His face has transformed from L.A.’s charming cruise director into the mutineer who points the ship straight into the iceberg just to hear the sound of the crash. With his eyes wide, he turns to me and shouts along with the track, “I feel freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
As he pulls the car into a strip-mall doughnut shop, he confesses, “I don’t get this shit called anxiety. I guess it’s when someone’s nervous.”
He waits a beat, miming introspection, pretending he didn’t notice me instinctively grab the seat in the explosion of g-force.
“But uh, when I was driving like that, were you nervous?”
This is the A side, B side of Tyler Okonma, aka Tyler, the Creator. He’s high-octane, high-fructose. The 27-year-old rapper-producer-director-comedy writer–fashion designer–festival organizer is a polarizer and a crowd-pleaser. He’s a humanbanned in the U.K., in part, because of homophobic lyrics, and yet he has an increasingly open penchant for men himself.
