There’s something special to me about seeing this high-profile rapper glamorously strut across the stage while performing “Running Out of Time” when men - especially us men of color - are taught that any exhibition of femininity is forbidden. The outfit, a simple blue suit with a short bob haircut, made Tyler look genderless from the crowd’s perspective, freeing him from the constraints of hypermasculinity.Īll those rules about what masculinity is evaporated the moment Tyler took the stage, and as someone struggling with embracing my identity, watching that performance was liberating. 25 concert the moment they went on sale.Īs a queer man, watching Tyler, the Creator perform in a gender-nonconforming outfit to sing love songs about other men was one of the most impactful moments of my life. Tyler’s best songs have lyrics that could’ve easily been ripped out of my own poetry notebook, and that connection drove me to frantically buy tickets to his Sept. Listening to Tyler rap about the same fears makes me feel less alone. That moment was one of many reasons why I fear wearing my rainbow pride pin on my backpack, knowing the glares I’ll garner from passersby. The image of judgmental stares and chuckles as I walked into a party wearing glitter last Halloween still haunts me. I’m still shackled by hypermasculinity and the ways in which we’ve conditioned men to behave and dress. I came out as bisexual in high school but I didn’t break out of the garden shed at that point. It’s a sentiment I can relate to, and with sexual orientation being a theme that Tyler addresses frequently in his music, songs like “Garden Shed” make me see myself in the rapper’s lyrics.

These lines open the final verse to “Garden Shed,” my favorite song by Tyler, the Creator, where he likens hiding his sexuality from others to being trapped in a garden shed, when all he wants to do is embrace his inner “Flower Boy”- his authentic identity, unfiltered by the constraints of hypermasculinity. “Garden shed for the garden, that is where I was hidin’, that was real love I was in, ain’t no reason to pretend.”

Tyler the creator flower boy concert