If you’ve ever dismissed Tyler, the Creator as a misogynistic, homophobic, ill-humored attention-whore, it’s likely that you haven’t actually given his music a chance. I know this because I used to think that.

His negative media presence put me off from really listening to his albums and because of this, it took me four whole years after Tyler’s 2009 debut mixtape, Bastard, to fully recognize and understand his gift.

Now it may seem irrelevant to write this piece half a decade after Odd Future first broke out of the LA music scene with their obscene lyrics and generated controversial think pieces from publications left to right. It’s obvious that they’ve waned in the past few years; the collective isn’t tight anymore, the brotherhood of the most prolific EARLWOLF that once thrilled us have fallen apart, and most importantly, Tyler (and Earl) have stopped rapping about their gory rape fantasies, violent outbursts, and satanic worships since T’s stream-of-consciousness raps on Goblin and Thebe’s self-actualization excursion in Samoa (though the homophobic slurs remain). So why now?

When the Australian feminist group tried to ban him from his tour in 2013, and later when the Texas police arrested him for inciting a ‘riot’ at SXSW 2014, these incidents seemed to yet again flare up debates about his beginnings, which only then I’ve realized will follow him for the rest of his musical career. 

Many writers time and time again, try to justify his violence and misogyny by putting them in the backburner, focusing on his lyrical dexterity instead, but that still derails from the actual problem. 

So this is to all the confused Feminists: Don’t ignore his words, “Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome”, stare it down and absorb it until YOU GET IT.

It’s the energy. The aggression. The vulnerability.

There aren’t many artists who are able to channel them so intensely like T, and the way he abruptly switches from suicidal to demonic to boastful to frail is just so mortal.

The point isn’t to be able to relate to his homicidal motives, it’s to relate to the exposed extremity of mixed emotions - vitriol, angst, and morality which he is constantly torn by - that is so fatally innate to the core of every human being. 

His stories are just a mere tool he uses to bring out this dynamism a la Tarantino. The stripped-down rawness and his candidness with his darker, taboo thoughts are what makes his music alluring, therapeutic and liberating.