News · TV

The Nuts and Bolts of Rising Icon Tyler, The Creator

One of the most innovative minds in rap comes back around to television. 
By  · Published on June 30th, 2017

One of the most innovative minds in rap comes back around to television. 

We’ve come a long way since the whole Yonkers bug-eating fiasco with Tyler, The Creator, and since then he’s only elevated his status as an icon, slowly and skillfully. Besides putting out two undeniably brilliant albums, he’s organized six annual Camp Flog Gnaw Carnivals, invented a phone app, and developed an aesthetically pleasing fashion line.

From the beginning, though, Tyler has expressed an interest in doing television and movies, citing Wes Anderson as his favorite film director and an inspiration. Between 2012 to 2014, Tyler and fellow friends from Odd Future made us pee our pants while watching outrageous skits on Loiter Squad and occasionally voiced characters for animated series such as Regular Show and Black Dynamite.

As successful as Tyler’s become, he’s always served as director of his music videos (under the name Wolf Haley), stemming as far back as “VCR” and “French” in 2010 and through the latest, “Who Dat Boy,” which was released yesterday via Tyler’s twitter. Tyler uses his admiration for colors and vivid imagination of fictional locations to develop and direct gorgeous, distinctive videos for many of his self-produced songs.

He also served as director for the video for “Glowing” by D.A., which is simply eye-candy. An acclaimed quality of Tyler is his knack for detail and fearless nature, so while the rapper has received his fair share of backlash in the past, he’s always made innovative steps to distance himself from a label.

In recent months, Tyler’s been the subject of a documentary based on his junior album, Cherry Bomb, and has also written the opening theme to the Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World. The phone app, Golf Media, features several skits featuring Tyler and his friends while also supplying fans with personal playlists and behind-the-scenes snippets of projects.

Tyler’s interests also expand beyond the arts, as it’s well-known he’s a lover of beautiful, fast cars. It only makes sense he would drive a White Telsa for Jaden Smith in Smith’s video “Batman.”

Perhaps most impressive out of all endeavors, though, is the announcement of two, upcoming television shows involving the remarkable mind of Tyler, The Creator.

Once again teaming up with Adult Swim, Tyler will serve as creator of the music score and original compositions for the new series The Jellies. Besides working in line with the music, Tyler and pal Lionel Boyce will voice characters in the quarter-hour series as it follows a 16-year-old adoptee.

The kickstart of the series’ escapades occurs after the main character, Cornell, finds out he’s adopted by jellyfish, which in turn creates unpredictable situations. A promo clip from the series was released a few months ago with the show in line to premiere in the summer.

The Jellies won’t be Tyler’s only television venture, as he’s also just shared the trailer for his new show on Viceland, Nuts + Bolts, which will air in August. This series, much like Tyler, will be completely and utterly random. The subject will basically be Tyler’s mind, much like Golf Media.

According to the trailer, the show will follow Tyler as he investigates “how everything that I think is awesome is made.” Some of his areas of interest to anticipate are: donuts, go-karts, stop-motion, mustard, and time travel.

It’s no secret Tyler has made progressive steps, including changing his beloved twitter name, just to appeal to a larger crowd of consumers, so any OG Odd Future fan can only respect the distance we’ve come since vulgar Myspace raps.

Regardless of how cool all these new upcoming projects are, I hope Tyler knows we’re still waiting on a fourth album and his previous talks of a feature film. But no rush here. For the time being, Nuts + Bolts might just be enough: