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Tyler, the Creator’s ‘Flower Boy’ and It’s Importance for Masculinity

By Syed Numan

To begin this story, we are going to travel back into time about 27 years, and go to the small town of Ladera Heights, California. Here, a young boy was born to an African-American mother and a Nigerian father--his father was quick to leave after he was born, and he doesn’t remember his father at all. As he grew up in a black community, he was surrounded by gang violence, drugs and corruption. He looked for an outlet as a young teenager (age 14), and learned how to play the piano by himself--and he was damn good. By the time he was a senior in high school, he was recording his own beats and rapping. His friends noticed and gave him a lot of praise.

When he turns 18, we meet Tyler, the Creator. No longer an innocent boy, Tyler is now a full-blown character on his first project, Bastard. On Bastard, Tyler is rapping about a character he creates having an interview with a therapist, Dr. TC, and the concept of the album is the damage he goes through being a child to an unknown father (in other words, a bastard). The content of this album is horrifically misogynistic, offensive, vile and a combination of any mean words you could think of. On his debut project, Tyler goes for shock factor--and it works. He receives a lot of attention for this project, and his main platform for getting his music at the time was Youtube, where he posted music videos for his songs which were home-made quality, featuring him and his friends skateboarding and being reckless. We can tell there is a sense of fun throughout his music, but it is the type of fun you have when you disregard what anyone thinks, and you don’t care how offensive you’re being.

Tyler quickly goes from Youtube to MTV when his music video for the song “Yonkers”, from his first studio album which followed Bastard, Goblin, and continues to play into his horror-enthused character as a musician. The video features him eating what appears to be a cockroach, and at the end, he hangs himself. The video is below if you would like to watch, but be forewarned of the graphic content and potentially triggering images.

The main idea I want to get across here is that this leg of Tyler’s career had a very clear theme and idea. Tyler established his character as someone who is anti-establishment, anti-societal norms, and wanted people to know that he was a rebel. He has a song from his album Goblin called “Radicals”, in which the chorus goes:

“Kill people, burn shit, fuck school Kill people, burn shit, fuck school Kill people, burn shit, fuck school Kill people, burn shit, fuck school I'm fucking radical, n***a, I'm fucking radical I'm fucking radical, I'm motherfucking radical I'm fucking radical, n***a, I'm fucking radical I'm fucking radical, I'm motherfucking radical”

If this is not evidence to you that Tyler did not care, I suggest you listen to his other content from this time period. The character that he puts on as a rapper is one that falls in line with the common themes that have existed in rap music since its birth--strong masculinity (given that the strong majority of rap music through history has been by black males), objectification of women, and dominance. Tyler, the Creator exhibits all of these ideas through his music, and established his entire fanbase based on the demand he was meeting for the type music people wanted. It is important to understand how the entire history of Tyler, from his birth to his fame, was critical to the person he became and shaped his entire identity. Growing up in a black community without a father, this gave him his reason to be upset with the world right away. From the beginning, he was screaming about the vengeance, terror and fear he wanted to give back to the world, which he does in his music. Tyler, as he grows older, realizes this aggressiveness could not persist through his entire career. This theme continues through his next few albums, but decreases in severity, and we can see more maturity as he continues to grow as an artist.

In his later years, he starts to delve into the fashion industry, and has his own clothing brand called Golf Wang. He begins to play around with fashion, and his style is seen as unique, and definitely not typical for a male rapper image. He often wore colorful outfits, and was not afraid to stand out. Male fashion in hip hop has come a long way, and Tyler makes that very clear. He expresses himself through fashion, and this is important to his identity and to our understanding of who he is.

This brings us to near present day. On July 21st, 2017, Tyler released his fourth studio album, Flower Boy. Here, we see a fresh perspective on a mature version of him whom we haven’t seen before.

This album, lyrically and musically, was a huge change from Tyler’s previous catalog. This album features more mature music--detailed, intricate and smooth instrumentation coupled with strong songwriting and singing--as well as subject matter that talks about growing as a person, becoming comfortable in his own skin, and most importantly--his sexuality. Through the lyrics in this album, Tyler talks about how he struggled with growing into his identity, and specifically how his sexuality caused him to be insecure as a man. In the song “Garden Shed”, he uses an analogy comparing a garden shed to a “hiding place” which correlates with the idea of “being in the closet”.

“Garden shed, garden shed, garden shed, garden shed

For the garden

That is where I was hidin'

That was real love I was in

Ain't no reason to pretend

Garden shed, garden shed, garden shed

Garden shed for the garçons

Them feelings that I was guardin'

Heavy on my mind

All my friends lost

They couldn't read the signs

I didn't wanna talk and tell 'em my location

And they ain't wanna walk

Truth is, since a youth kid, thought it was a phase

Thought it'd be like the phrase; "poof," gone

But, it's still goin' on”

Through these lyrics we can tell that Tyler really tried to conceal his sexuality at first, and would even lie to himself about the truth. We can even look at the early parts of his career and say it could have been an overcompensation for the way he was feeling--he wanted to very clearly dissociate from homosexuality, and did so by pandering to the strongly heterosexual and male dominated themes of rap music today. He shows his vulnerability in a way that he was not able to, and this is a very honest and transparent side of him that we have not seen.

The concept of what Tyler, the Creator means with the title “Flower Boy” is critical to our understanding of the project as well. The track “Where This Flower Blooms” uses the blooming of a flower as a metaphor for Tyler’s growth and ability to become comfortable in his own skin. We know that for black men in America, there are certain stigmas that are in place, and certain expectations that are given that put them into a specific box. For Tyler, he makes it clear on this album that coming out of that box is something that was important for himself as a man because he didn’t feel like he fit into the image of what everyone thinks he should be as a man.

Aesthetically, the album uses a lot of percussion instrumentation and soft, melodic R&B alternative singing--which also ties into the theme of the album. In an interview with Highsnobiety, a music, streetwear and news blog, Tyler talks about why he chose certain features for this album including artists such as Frank Ocean, A$AP Rocky, Lil Wayne and more. These artists, as Tyler explains, are all innovators, and have expressed their identities through creativity and boundary pushing in music and help Tyler to do so on this album. These artists had to go against some norm of masculinity--whether it be through fashion, musical sound, sexuality--and this album is all about defying these types of norms.