Tyler, the Creator is keeping it real about releasing music — and he’s not here for the perfectionist mindset.
While chatting with Zane Lowe about his new album Don’t Tap the Glass — which dropped with little fanfare following the success of Chromakopia — Tyler explained he didn’t feel pressured to give it some elaborate rollout.
“I didn’t have to put [the] album out,” he said around the 15:20 mark. “I didn’t wanna be precious. I didn’t want to spend three years and try to be super innovative. … I made an album, I was done.”
He added that once it was finished, he was ready to move on: “I was just gonna upload that muthafucka the moment it was done and continue moving on with my life because I just wanted it out.”
Tyler warned about falling into the trap of overthinking, saying, “It’s so easy to design your own handcuffs, lock yourself up, and put the key over there… and that just turns into pressure, whether it’s from you or fans.”
He also called out artists who get stuck chasing perfection: “People end up scared and not putting albums out for 15 years because they feel like they always have to — ‘I got to make the most innovative, best stuff.’ And sometimes, man, that song is good. Just put that bitch out.”
Tyler summed it up perfectly: “When n***as is 80 years old, you really think [you] about to sit here [with] all this great music on a hard drive, be like, ‘Oh fuck, it wasn’t…’ Fuck it, put it out.”
Even after sharing his laid-back approach to releasing music, Tyler admitted to Zane Lowe that his current mindset might contradict what he said just weeks earlier.
“My thought process is probably super hypocritical to something I said two weeks ago,” he confessed. “But the beauty in it is like my idea on that might change tomorrow. I might work on something new and be like, ‘Oh, I gotta spend five years on this album and this bridge and get these strings right.’”
Still, for now, Tyler is embracing a more carefree creative space. “Where I’m at now, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I just wanna make stuff and put it out like when I was 17,’ ‘cause that shit was just fun and free.”
The 34-year-old dropped his ninth studio album, Don’t Tap the Glass, last month — and it made a major splash. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, moving 197,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week ending July 24, 2025. It also marks Tyler’s fourth straight project to top the chart.
