Tyler, The Creator‘s CALL ME IF YOU GET LOSTwon Best Rap Album at the 2022 Grammy Awards on Sunday (April 3). The chart-topping, gold-certified project fended off competition from Kanye West’sDONDA, J. Cole‘s The Off-Season and Nas‘ King’s Disease II to earn Tyler his second Grammy Award.
As his accompanying North American tour rolled into Portland, Oregon on Monday (April 4), the former Odd Future frontman took a moment onstage to shed more light on CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, including revealing the meaning behind the album’s name. As Sir Baudelaire explained, no, the title isn’t an offer to phone him for directions.
“After IGOR I noticed how much rap music changed my life and my friends’ lives, so I said, ‘Man, I just want to rap again and flex and talk my shit and brag about the shit that I love,'” he told the crowd. “Whether it’s a lake or some small European rally car or whoever I’m fucking for the week or whatever I’m wearing, I wanted to brag about that because that’s the shit that is important to me.
“And when I say CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, I don’t mean when you don’t know what to do. I mean when you call me, I want you to be telling me the shit that you on, the shit that you doing, you out in the world getting lost doing your shit. I don’t want n-ggas calling me like, ‘Oh, I’m sad, I don’t know’ — no, fuck that. Call me and let me know that you on your shit ’cause I’m on my shit, and maybe we can get on that flight and meet up and see what the fuck we on. That’s what I meant by that.”
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Tyler, The Creator also spoke about his love for rap music while highlighting the various artists who influenced CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, ranging from Lil Wayne, Jeezy and Clipse to Q-Tip, Lupe Fiasco and RZA.
“Growing up listening to mixtapes and fucking Jeezy and Lil Wayne and Clipse We Got It For Cheap and Lupe Fiasco’s Fahrenheit stuff and everything DJ Drama was doing really impacted how I made music,” he said. “A lot of these songs didn’t have hooks and choruses, and if you listen to the early [Odd Future] stuff like Radical and Bastard and OF Tape, we didn’t have hooks. A lot of that is from the influence that these mixtapes and these Gangsta Grillz-es had.”
Tyler, The Creator's 'CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST' Is A Beautiful Balance Of Ego & Total Vulnerability
Tyler reserved special praise for Q-Tip’s 1999 debut solo album Amplified, which he described as the “blueprint” for his Grammy-winning effort.
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“[Q-Tip] was the weird backpack n-gga that put this album out where he was like, ‘Hey y’all, don’t get it twisted. I’m fucking whoever, I’m driving whatever, I’m doing whatever,'” he said. “And without that album, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST wouldn’t exist, so thank you Q-Tip for setting the blueprint.”
As for RZA, Tyler admitted he didn’t have especially fond feelings for Wu-Tang Clan and Gravediggaz due to the comparisons drawn between them and Odd Future early on — until he heard the beat for Gravediggaz’s “2 Cups of Blood,” which he borrowed for “Lumberjack.”
“We used to get compared to [Gravediggaz] early on and I would rebel against it because I’m like, ‘Stop fucking doing that,'” he said. “And then I heard that beat and I’m like, ‘This shit is the greatest shit ever!’ CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST was supposed to just be a mixtape. I was just going to rap over other people’s beats, none of my shit. But then it turned into what it turned into.”
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Tyler, The Creator capped off his P.S.A. by urging his fans to treat rap music with the same respect he does and do their homework on the genre.
“Because of the Internet now, a lot of kids don’t do their history. And the genre they’re a fan of — man, they don’t see how important a Gucci Mane is that all these kids are derivative of now,” he added. “So all y’all being here being a fan of this thing, please just do your history and learn and respect this thing that some people really hold dear.
“I can’t lie, seeing a bunch of baby-ass white girls dancing to RZA beats in 2022 is fucking progression to me, bro. It’s beautiful.”
