Earlier this month, YouTube hosted its first YouTube Music Awards, highlighting artists like Eminem and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
Shortly after the awards aired, Tyler, the Creator, expressed some criticism of the awards via Twitter:
In an interview on the revamped “The Arsenio Hall Show,” Tyler explained what he meant by the tweet.
“I’m 22, so I kind of grew up in an age where the Internet was basically there forever, and YouTube, the way it’s set up, gives… anyone who’s creative a platform to showcase their work to people,” he said. “And for a website like YouTube to have an awards show, you would think they would use that awards show to give creative people who’s not on the Top 20 Billboards, or that everyone doesn’t know that’s not popular a chance to actually get recognition for being creative an innovative. But instead, they did the same thing that the VMAs or the Billboard Pop Awards did with the Katy Perrys and the Justin Biebers, and I’m friends with Justin, no offense to Katy, Justin, or anyone who was nominated for something… It’s actually a group of people who don’t listen to the radio and who’s sick of seeing the same weak stuff everyday.”
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Tyler also addressed his use of the word “faggot,” particularly given that one of his friends, Frank Ocean, is gay. “That’s just a word,” he said. “You can take the power out of that word. The way that I see things, you chose to be offended if you care about stuff like that. And that might sound very ignorant, but if you’re a black person, and someone calls you an N-word, and you get offended, maybe you might be. But if I know that I’m not an N-word… I’m not gonna get offended, because I know I’m not that. Frank’s gay, and I use that word all the time, he doesn’t care, because he knows me. He knows that when I say that word, I’m not thinking of someone’s sexual orientation or anything. It’s just another word that has no meaning.”
Finally, Tyler was asked about his opinion of United States President Barack Obama. “I don’t really get into it, because I like to do fun stuff, but I realized, he’s an N-word that figured it out.”
Watch the interview below.
Tyler released his third studio album, Wolf, in April.
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