Tyler, The Creator Says His Grammy Win Feels Like A 'Backhanded Compliment'

Additional reporting by Cheryl Krucas


One of the sweetest moments at the 2020 Grammys noticed Tyler, the Creator hugging his mother onstage, a gold trophy in his hand along with a win for Best Rap Album under his belt. "To my mother, you did a wonderful job raising this guy," he said while looking at her to his left.


Although while Tyler has long spent his music career in the hip-hop realm, his recent albums have explored more experimental elements, especially 2019's warm R&B odyssey Igor. As Igor is currently the reigning Best Rap Album, a Rolling Stone reporter in the Grammys press room had questions about how Tyler — a genre polyglot whose explosive performance on the Grammys stage earlier in the night hewed closer to a rock efficiency — felt about that. His comments were measured and thoughtful.


"On one side, I'm very grateful that what I made could just be acknowledged in a global like this," he mentioned. Yet also, it sucks that any time we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that's genre-bending or anything, they also put it in a rap or urban category. I don't like that urban word. It's just politically correct way to mention the N-word to me."


Igor's musicality definitely spans rap, although also a classic R&B-inspired sound that wouldn't be out of place being called simply pop. Tyler addressed that in his remarks as well.


as soon as I hear that, I'm just like, why can't we just be in pop?" He mentioned. "Half of me feels like the rap nomination was a backhanded compliment, 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. That's what it felt like a bit."


But Tyler was quick to reiterate the gratefulness he expressed onstage accepting his award earlier in the evening, where he gave a heartfelt shout-out to Pharrell Williams for making music that he associated with as he felt "left-of-center" of mass media growing up. Yet another half of me is very grateful that the art that I made would be acknowledged on a level like this, Once I don't do the radio stuff, I'm not played at Target, I'm in a whole different world than what a lot of people here listen to."


Tyler walked away from the 2020 Grammys one for one, winning for Igor and bringing to life one of the most electric clone-centric performances since Eminem flooded the 2000 VMAs with Slim Shady lookalikes.


Find all of MTV News's 2020 Grammys coverage right here.