Divisive hip-hop star Tyler, The Creator has offered a brief response to wayward UK PM Theresa May, just years after she banned him from the country.
Back in 2015, it was revealed that founding Odd Future member Tyler, The Creator, had been banned from a number of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and England.
While activist group Collective Shout supposedly got Tyler banned from Australia due to his lyrical content, confusion reigned due to conflicting reports from both the artist and Frontier Touring, who were set to host the rapper later that year.
Although Tyler, The Creator hasn’t been back to Australia since, England’s ban of the musician was much clearer, with Tyler being barred from the country for “3-5 years” due to the lyrical content of his 2009 mixtape Bastard, and 2011 album, Goblin.
Speaking to The Guardian soon after the ban from England, Tyler explained that he felt the ban was due to Australia’s decision to exclude him from our shores.
“They’re following! They’re just followers at this point – to me, at least,” he explained. “Personally. I don’t know. It all came out of nowhere; I was [in London] in May, dude. Two months later they’re like: ‘Hey, uh, yeah, we reviewed music from a long time ago out of nowhere, [and] you can’t come in.’ What?”
Speaking of his song, ‘SMUCKERS‘, which was written in response to his ban from New Zealand the previous year, Tyler explained that he wrote that song “because I was starting to think that they did not like the fact that their children were idolising a black man.”
theresa gone, im back
— T (@tylerthecreator) May 24, 2019
Just last week though, Tyler, The Creator found himself back in England for the first time, announcing a surprise show in support of his latest album, IGOR.
At the last minute though, the show was cancelled, with Tyler explaining that the decision to cancel the show had in fact been made by the Metropolitan Police, noting that the rambunctious crowd had caused officials to get “nervous”.
“Too rowdy. Cops cancelled it, go home,” he wrote in the now-deleted Tweet. “I tried. The gate climbing [was the] nail in the coffin.”
While he promised to return at a later date, this week also saw the resignation of UK Prime Minister Theresa May, who had been the Home Secretary back in 2015, and reportedly was the one who approved the English ban of Tyler, The Creator.
Taking to Twitter yesterday, the hip-hop icon shared a short Tweet in which he simply wrote, “theresa gone, I’m back,” indicating that he hopes the future to be less difficult for him to tour England.
At this stage, Tyler, The Creator has made no official plans about when he hopes to return to England (or Australia and New Zealand, for that matter).
However, his manager, Christian Clancy, has claimed his client has “evolved and grown out of” the violent and homophobic lyrics that appeared on his earlier releases, likely hoping that the countries that had previously banned him will not protest his appearance on their shores in the future.
Check out ‘EARFQUAKE’ by Tyler, The Creator:
