Tyler, the Creator has taken home the award for Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammys. His 2019 record IGOR beat out LPs by Meek Mill’s Championships, 21 Savage’s i am > i was, YBN Cordae The Lost Boy, and J. Cole’s Dreamville (Revenge of The Dreamers III).
This is Tyler’s first Grammy win and third nomination. Tyler was previously nominated for Best Rap Album for 2017’s Flower Boy and Album of the Year for his contributions to Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange.
This makes Tyler the seventh Nigerian to win a Grammy!
Tyler then gave an incredible speech…
Following his win for Best Rap Album at the Grammys, Tyler, the Creator gave two speeches. The first was onstage, in which he admonished the crowd for clapping too much and confidently steamrolled over the incidental music.
In the one backstage, in which he expressed frustration about the Grammys’ ghettoization of hip-hop. “Half of me feels like the rap nomination was a backhanded compliment”, he said.
“Like ‘oh, my little cousin wants to play the game, let’s give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it’,” Tyler said. It was a pointed and all-too-accurate retort.
Eclectic and eccentric performance
Tyler, the Creator collaborated with Boyz II Men on a performance; and Grammy performances like that often tilt towards respectability. Rising stars are frequently asked to file down their rough edges and tone down their aesthetic toward that of a much older one-time collaborator.
But Tyler the Creator refused to do so. He forced the show to go along with his much more alienating and subversive vision.
Instead of moving onto Boyz II Men’s throwback turf, Tyler let them sing the rich harmonies on Earfquake. Then he put them on top of a terrifying, burning set of houses while he gasped and wheezed through New Magic Wand, one of the best songs on his album IGOR.
The terrifying set on the stage was perhaps a nod to the devastating fires in both Los Angeles and Australia; showing his social and environmental consciousness.
His spastic dancing, the glitching camera work, and his gravelly singing all reinforced his place; not just as one of the world’s best rappers and producers, but one of his generation’s sharpest creative minds.
Congratulations on making history, Tyler!
