Tegan & Sara's open letter calling Tyler, The Creator on his homophobia and misogyny

...Kanye's album was one of reflection. So misogyny became 'qualified' through admission of mistakes. The language might not be particularly excusable but it was delivered in a manner that didn't leave a long-lasting sourness. Plus the production was SIIIICK. And Kayne's past productions comprise the 'journey' to Twisted Fantasy (and the title of the record itself is fairly indicative that he is not wholly serious about its entire contents; or, rather, that imagination should not be perceived as matter of fact). Tyler: very different. Limited back-story and what there is has always been confrontational, to say the least. On Bastard there was a cheekiness that seemed to lessen the impact of lyrics about trapping girls in basements and videotaping their rape. I can't explain how, exactly, but now this content has lost that laugh-cos-it's-all-you-can-do defense. Goblin is, in places, unforgivably awful of lyric. And now the spotlight is brighter than it's ever been on Odd Future, said kids will have either accept censorship/adjust their however-tongue-in-butt-cheek worldview; or simply be forgotten. I do believe that Tyler - and select few OF types - can make for themselves a real future. But they still need to do a lot to convince the average listener that their imaginations are not geared the way they are for purely shock value purposes - which they often seem to be. Blah blah ramble...

I have to admire Sara Quin entering into this debate and it is nice to have an opinion on this issue that comes from a different source than the absolute mountain of blog posts, record reviews, magazine features et al. which have been (mostly) the work of music journalists involved in the usual critic circle-jerk. But I also feel she's misrepresenting a lot of the key issues here. For one, her post suggests that Goblin has received universal acclaim and that critics and listeners alike have simply ignored some of the content in Tyler, the Creator's/Odd Future's music, which is wrong. I'm not going to link to every critical piece about Goblin (because there's a lot) but not everyone is in a rush to "defend, excuse and congratulate" Tyler. Don't get me wrong - some voices are, but there are critical voices which Sara Quin is too quick to ignore. Maybe that's just out of her ignorance of those voices, I don't know, but it undermines her argument to a point by not including them (IMO, obviously - you might think it doesn't matter that Sara Quin's got better things to do than trawl blogs for people who hate OF).

The general thrust of Sara Quin's post seems to be that there's nobody in the music industry speaking out against homophobia and misogyny and, y'know, I agree with that. But I don’t see what exactly what is achieved with complaining about one twenty year-old guy who says faggot and raps about rape rather than examining and questioning, say, the reasons why not many people in the music industry speak out against homophobia and misogyny. There are bigger issues at hand here and all Sara Quin does in that post is hint at them, which is disappointing. I don’t know whether she’s spoke at any length about them elsewhere, but I feel that any comments about Tyler, the Creator should be the start of the discussion about homophobia and misogyny in the music world and too many things I’ve read these past few months regarding Tyler and OF (including Sara Quin’s little post) treat him/them like the be-and-end-all.

It’s not worthless to discuss Tyler’s music, but if people such as Sara Quin do want things to change there are bigger issues to be tackled.

i really like it when DiS news pieces are opiniated. the author is in the top-line, and 'news' is always recieved subjectively. it's not like there are real people watching a tsunami happen, the only people commenting on, reading or spreading the 'news' (apart from tyler) are either seeing on the screen or recieving it in a email or w/e. it's immediately compromised.

also dont know how good a thread it is, but there was some discussion on the boards about it a while ago
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4281279

I can't say I'm a fan of the nastier stuff on the record at all, but it does seem like an intentionally repellent persona to me.

I don't know, I think a lot of it is down to how the record is taken. Like, a lot of very liberal people say that Jerry Sadowitz is a genius, but when I saw him at the Portishead ATP I had to walk out of the room, just because I found the unqualified enthusiasm of the crowd for these vile racial jokes so disgusting, I couldn't really intellectualise the comic process.

I know it's wanky to talk about 'persona' by way of an excuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that not only is the Tyler of the record a constructed persona, but also he's a person who has hit absolute rock bottom and is having a really horrific, joyless time.

Buuuuut, I dunno, if his fans just find this stuff funny then that's pretty awful. And if they do then I'm just not sure if I have enough faith in the intelligence of Vice readers for me not to suspect the very existence of some of these songs not to make it marginally more likely that a Vice reader will commit an act of sexual assault, and I don't think the artistry on display is much of a trade off for that.

I dunno, I was reading somewhere some commentator saying that Tyler was out to shock and that this was no worse than Siouxie Sioux parading round in swastikas and singing about there being 'too many Jews here' when she was Tyler's age. Which is sort of a reductive way of looking at it and probably she deserves much more flak for that than she got, but I suppose ultimately we'll judge Tyler on what he achieves over the next ten years. I mean, maybe he will commit a sexual assault and go to prison. More likely he'll grow up. Clearly he's a talented producer.

I think we might have the same day-job.