Plenty of us have been entranced, or morbidly fascinated, by Tyler the Creator’s clever, relentless rhyming and pure venom with which he performs.
But his penchant for provocation has arguably crossed the line this week after he launched a personal onstage tirade aimed at Talitha Stone, a campaigner with the Australian group Collective Shout, which lobbies frequently against the spread of misogyny and has been calling for Tyler to be deported. She reported the outburst to police.
It started when Stone tweeted at clothing store Culture Kings, ahead of the rapper’s instore appearance which would prompt the attendance of riot police:
have to visit @culturekings tomoz to protest against @fucktyler he will be there at midday. I think they need educating on #misogyny
— Talitha(@littleredfox17) June 5, 2013
Tyler retweeted her to his 1.7 million followers, spawning an avalanche of hate and violent threats from his fans, many of whom are probably too young to even understand the true impact of such threats.
Although it’s illegal to “use a carriage service to make a threat” by law in Australia, police told her she couldn’t do anything about it beyond “blocking them”.
Stone then attended Tyler’s all ages concert at the Enmore Theatre, where the rapper preceded the track “B***h Suck Dick” with a personal dedication to her, telling the audience “some b***h is trying to get me kicked out of the country”.
“F***ing b***h, I wish she could hear me call her a b***h, too, f***ing whore,” he continued to rising applause from the crowd. “Yeah, I got a sold out show right now b***h. Hey this f***ing song is dedicated to you, you f***ing c**t.”
Stone reflected on the incident in a piece for The Guardian titled “Tyler the Creator shouldn’t be allowed to verbally abuse me”, writing,
“At his incitement of violence towards me, the crowd went wild, cheering and pumping their fists. The under-aged
