Canadians sisters Tegan and Sara Quin who have just completed work on their seventh studio LP have opened up in an interview with Billboard Magazine in the United States about their war of words with Odd Future frontman Tyler, The Creator.
In May, Sara wrote a blog post where she labelled Tyler ‘repulsive and irresponsible’ and took aim at the media and industry which she said ‘glorifies and excuses misogyny and homophobia, and the community of artists that doesn’t seem remotely bothered by it’.
At the time the rap outfits leading man responded to the girls, who are both lesbians, by saying “If Tegan And Sara Need Some Hard Dick, Hit Me Up!”. Since then Odd Future have been hired by Comedy Central to produce their own TV show and have been busy playing gigs across the world including last week in New Orleans where they were accused of slapping a female photographer.
Sara Quin has remained quiet since the incident but Tegan told Billboard that the reaction to the letter was “overwhelmingly positive”. “The conversation was directed at the industry and not at Tyler, The Creator,” says Quin. “I agree that our industry often times is so busy just telling the story of what’s happening that the they don’t realize that they’re perpetuating a stereotype, or perpetuating something very evil and negative.”
She continued “Tyler, The Creator may in fact not be a homophobe, but the fact is that, if I littered this interview with racial slurs, you wouldn’t laugh at all later if I told you it was a joke. I think that we have to be better than that, we have to be better as a society. It’s not about censorship and it’s not about telling people you can’t make music.”
“Tyler can make as much music as he likes and continue to flourish or not, but ultimately, we live in a society where we absolutely have the power to say, ‘Geez, you know what, we don’t want to influence our readers with something that we don’t believe in, and we don’t believe that littering a record 233 times with rape jokes and incest jokes and the word faggot is funny or interesting.”
Tegan also said she believed that one day the industry will stop accepting derogatory lyrics saying “I talked to a lot of people in our industry who are like, ‘If we … didn’t put him on this festival, we’d lose money and we’d lose our jobs,’ and that’s a terrible reason to perpetuate hate. But that is the way it is and hopefully it changes, and Sara and I hope to be a part of that change. We can be interesting and we can be creative without being hateful.”
Tegan & Sara caught up with Tone Deaf last time they were in Melbourne. You can watch part 1 of their interview below. To see the other parts click here.
