Tyler The Creator Derides “Hot Ones’-Style Music Journalism

Whenever Tyler The Creator and Nardwuar relatethere will always be gold to me. In his latest interview with the Canadian host, filmed on Camp Flog Ronger Recently, Tyler bemoaned the fanciful state of music journalism while coming up with what may be the funniest description on the show. The hot ones Never. Sneaker shopping also catches a stray animal in the interview, which you can watch in full above.

While talking about how much he loves talking about music, Tyler questions the reluctance of fans to take part in such conversations compared to interview shows with wild hooks. Lamenting that so much music journalism is focused on beef and gossip, he says: “We need to start talking about music again. We need to stop shopping for sneakers or deep-throating hot wings for an hour. Talk about your album, talk about music, talk about the 15 songs that you spent time on, mixed, mastered, put together and produced… when the album comes out and it sells 2 copies, everyone is confused – but they don’t. I don’t want to talk about music, they’d rather eat chicken wings and buy sneakers.

Tyler’s passion comes from a genuine place; he seems legitimately concerned that the devaluation of music could lead to a place where music is no longer worth playing or listening to. However, perhaps to illustrate exactly what he was talking about, only the comments above made it onto social media, prompting him to take to his Instagram story to clarify a few things.

“In the interview, I shared a thought about the lack of journalism in music,” he wrote, “and used ‘hot ones’ as one of two examples .”

this makes it seem like I have so much disdain towards the show, which I don’t, but in reality it was meant to be used as a broader example that came to mind when trying to make a point point. I could have said one of the (podcasts/releases that really push the more negative things), but at that point I didn’t. So Sean [Evans, the host of Hot Ones] you didn’t really deserve the energy that was coming out, that wasn’t my intention at all, even though “deep throat chicken” sounds hilarious to me. I’m very opinionated and outspoken, so this seems like my usual “complaint” (like everyone else, mine are just more shared than the usual poster or comment, even though most of the video is me making praise and show my gratitude to a multitude of things, this is not what will be shared or talked about). this will most likely be lost as the clip continues to air, but at least a few of you will see it. It won’t change much since its release but yeah. I really wish I used a different example, you seem like a nice old lady

Hey, look, I don’t always agree with T, but in this case… He’s absolutely right (and I’m not just saying that because my work depends almost entirely on my writing about music and people who actually LOOK at what I wrote). Music fans complain (rightly) about the emphasis on gossip and poor sourcing in today’s music journalism, but then they click over to SayCheeseTV and TheShadeRoom for their music news. This seems counterproductive to me. We (journalists and artists) get into this because we love music and we love talking about it. The cynicism and commercialism that slowly sucks the soul out of everything can be fought for, but only if we all care enough (including you, readers and viewers), to do so.

(He’s also right about releasing music again on Tuesdays, but you can watch the interview for that too).