Fresh from headlining day two at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, Tyler, the Creator sat down with hosts Ebro Darden, Laura Stylez and Peter Rosenberg on New York radio station Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning.”
For more than 90 minutes, Tyler discussed a variety of topics including his new album Call Me If You Get Lost, The LOX’s Verzuz performance, getting canceled, his Billboard chart feud with DJ Khaled and more.
When Rosenberg asks Tyler whether his issue with DJ Khaled had something to do with having different fanbases who have “different outsides,” Tyler replies, “Bro that Khaled thing was like, it was fun, it was just watching a man die inside.” Tyler was, of course, referring to his 2019 album Igor outperforming Khaled’s Father of Asahd during their debuts.
At the time, the We The Best Music founder took to Instagram to share a message many believed was aimed directly at Tyler. “I make albums so people can play it and you actually hear it,” Khaled wrote in a post he’s since deleted. “You know, driving your car, you hear another car playing it. You know, go to the barbershop, you hear them playing it. You know, turn the radio on, and you hear them playing it. It’s called great music. It’s called albums that you actually hear the songs. Not no mysterious shit that you never hear it.”
“The weirdo was winning, I was moonwalking in a wig. This nigga had everyone on his album. Everyone. That nigga’s ego was deflated, he’ll probably never admit,” Tyler recalled. “I didn’t say nothing, I just let that No. 1 speak. Nigga’s ego had to deal with that because his whole identity is being No. 1. And when he didn’t get that, that sat with him longer in real-life time than that moment.”
Earlier in the interview, Tyler talked about his younger fanbase discovering DJ Drama on his album and why he decided to add the Gangsta Grillz ad-libs on Call Me If You Get Lost.
“It’s ill I grew up listening to that, so that’s so ingrained in how I approach rap music; how I approach the genre; how I approached my skill set. In 2006, I was 14 turning 15 years old. So, for all the Waynes, all the Young Dros, all of the Pharrell mixtapes, all the We Got It For Cheaps, all the Farenheights that Lupe was putting out, all those after Jay retired around the Kingdom Come time all of his feature runs, all those Andre 3000 feature runs. That idea of approaching rap music like that is so ingrained in how I approach it; that the DJ Drama thing wasn’t out of the blue, it’s how we approached the early Odd Future stuff and things like that. I wanted a Gangsta Grillz since I could remember but it just wasn’t time. I didn’t have this big ass ring and wasn’t talkin’ about boats and shit. I’m now at that point where I could do it.”
Check out the full interview below: