As reported by Rolling Stone, Odd Future’s Tyler, The Creator has been banned from entering the United Kingdom for several years, forcing him to cancel a handful of upcoming shows. Tyler announced the news himself on Twitter, blaming the ban on “lyrics from 2009.” Tyler’s manager, Christian Clancy, expanded on this in a Tumblr post, explaining that the letter from the British government specifically referenced lines from the albums Bastard and Goblin—which were released in 2009 and 2011, respectively—and argues that Tyler’s music “encourages violence and intolerance of homosexuality” and “fosters hatred with views that seek to provoke others to terrorist acts.”
In his post, Clancy acknowledges that some these “OLD lyrics” (as he puts it) do make him “cringe,” but he still doesn’t understand why Tyler would be banned today when “he hasn’t delved into those lyrics in years.” These days, he says, Tyler writes songs “about cars and spreading your wings.” Clancy believes that Tyler shouldn’t be punished for offensive songs he wrote when he was younger, and instead he should be given a “pat on the back for becoming aware and making changes.” Also, he points out that Tyler has been to the U.K. more than 20 times in the last five years, so the timing on this is at least pretty weird.
Earlier this summer, Tyler was denied a visa that would allow him to play some shows in Australia, an incident that he directly—and incorrectly—blamed on the director of an Australian feminist organization. As one might expect given the world we live in, this woman then received what CNN called “a torrent of abusive tweets, many of them threatening and misogynistic.” There was also the time he kind of incited a riot at SXSW, which makes us wonder if the U.K.’s decision wasn’t just about some stupid lyrics he wrote four years ago.