Tyler, the Creator

Emerging from the Los Angeles underground rap scene, Tyler, the Creator became an unlikely star, pushing hip-hop in new directions while becoming an unpredictable and uncompromising presence in pop music.

Tyler Gregory Okonma was born in Hawthorne, California on March 6, 1991, and was raised by his mother. He later said growing up without his father present in his life kept him from “going the normal college route.”

He co-founded the alternative hip-hop group Odd Future in 2007, and released his debut album Bastard in 2009. His deadpan baritone vocal style and confrontationally dark lyrics stood out, as did his stark sonic and visual aesthetic (the black and white video for his 2011 song “Yonkers” depicted the rapper eating a cockroach and mock-hanging himself). By the time he released his third album Wolf in 2013, his sound was becoming more varied and his music was finding a larger audience as well as widespread critical acclaim. Throughout his rise, he was also a magnet for controversy, including accusations of homophobia in his lyrics (which have at times alluded ambiguously to his own sexuality), and arrests for vandalism and inciting a riot at a show in Austin, TX. He was briefly banned from performing in both the UK and New Zealand.

During the late-2010s, his albums — 2015’s Cherry Bomb, 2017s Flower Boy, 2019’s Igor —  were more sonically ambitious, less hostile-feeling, and more soulful than his early releases, dealing with a wider emotional palette, from romance to anxiety to open-hearted introspection. Like his music, Tyler’s sartorial profile has been striking; Rolling Stone described his signature look as, “schoolboy-contemporary-meets-fashion-goblin aesthetic.” In 2021, he hit a musical peak with Call Me If You Get Lost, a sonically rich and lyrically open-hearted LP that was praised almost universally as his best music yet. In 2024, he released Chromakopia, an album that saw him poke at his own myth, dealing with real-life issues like parenthood and reckoning with his feelings about his father. Rolling Stone’s four-star review noted, “Sonically, Chromakopia is well constructed and thoughtfully layered and for the most part complements the album’s storytelling.” — Jon Dolan