Tyler, the Creator Says ‘Cherry Bomb’ Backlash Made Him Better

Tyler, the Creator reflected on his career and offered creative advice to a room full of artists for Instagram’s Ask It Anyway, a new series of conversations with prominent artists.

Designer and The Cutting Room Floor podcaster Recho Omondi moderated the inaugural edition with Tyler, who was characteristically irreverent during the career-spanning talk; he began the conversation joking, “[Omondi] was like ‘Do you have the jitters right now, are you nervous?’ And I was like, ‘Why the fuck would I be? Nobody here has a gun.’” 

Beyond the laughs, Tyler got serious about several pivotal moments in his career, including what he perceived as backlash to his 2015 Cherry Bomb album. He said the project was a consequence of trying a bit too hard. 

“My goal was to prove to myself that I am the most diverse producer at the time,” he said. “People were just shitting on it… it made me say, oh shit – these songs aren’t good. Because of [the backlash], I was like, I need to reteach myself how to write songs. What is a chorus, hook, structure? That happening to me was one of the greatest things that could happen, because it made me dive into my skill and craft more.” 

Two years after Cherry Bomb, Tyler released Flower Boy, a soulful project heavily regarded as a demarcation point of his career. He told Omondi and the room of artists that Flower Boy “was the first album I put on the cover to let people know: all songs written, produced and arranged by me.” He added, “You have to tell people who you are. And I remember, the conversation started changing a bit… Now people are subconsciously listening to the production in a different way now, because I let them know that.” 

Elsewhere, Tyler talked about the importance of artists shifting their sound over time, pushing his career despite having minimal resources, and his music-making ethos: “Create like a child and edit like a scientist.”