Tyler, The Creator has revealed that he turned down record deals from both JAY-Z and Diddy early on in his career.
Tyler appeared as a guest on DJ Drama’s new Gangsta Grillz Podcast, the Call Me If You Get Lost hitmaker said Hov tried to sign him while they were eating tacos at his Los Angeles home.
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However, Tyler politely declined the Roc Nation mogul’s offer — along with that of the Bad Boy boss — as he wanted to maintain creative control over his output.
“[He] invited us to one of his L.A. homes and we just ate tacos,” Tyler recalled. “We ate some tacos and he wanted to sign us. I was like, ‘Man, you’re cool, but no.’
“Him, Puff… a lot of people were interested… I don’t know, I just want creative control and do everything.”
Despite the failed deal, Tyler, The Creator and JAY-Z went on to have a very fruitful relationship. They worked together on Frank Ocean’s “Biking” back in 2017, and Tyler said in a previous Hot 97 interview that JAY-Z has been giving him “ill advice” for years.
“Going to that man’s house is just enough to be like, ‘Oh, you can do this! You could be a fuck up, figure it out, be good, be great and do this,'” he said enthusiastically.
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“That man’s what, 51? Bro, he has the spirit of an excited 16-year-old at basketball camp. He’s just fun and he’s ageless. I don’t know how to explain it … bro, he’s a geek. Geeks are so important.”
Needless to say, Tyler, The Creator has done perfectly fine on his own. After building his fanbase and cultivating his unique artistic vision with albums like Goblin, Wolf and Flower Boy, the former Odd Future frontman scored his first No. 1 album in 2019 with IGOR.
The project also earned him his first-ever Grammy Award, winning Best Rap Album the following year. Tyler proved he was no fluke when his follow-up, 2021’s Call Me If You Get Lost, repeated both of those feats.
The achievements have only continued to stack up for the 32-year-old as he recently joined Spotify’s esteemed Billion Club thanks to his Flower Boy hit “See You Again” featuring Kali Uchis, which surpassed one billion streams on the platform earlier this month.
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Tyler, The Creator isn’t the only rap star to turn down a deal from JAY-Z. Fellow New Yorker Joey Bada$$ also rejected an offer from Roc Nation following the success of his breakout mixtape 1999 in 2012.
“I read JAY-Z’s Decoded book and there’s this one chapter in there where he went to go meet with Russell Simmons to sign with Def Jam. He said his only thought sitting across the table from Russell Simmons was, ‘Damn, I don’t wanna sign to this n-gga. I wanna be this n-gga,’” he told DJ Whoo Kid in 2016.
“I kinda had that same perspective. But shit, shout-out to Jay, man because he was on it before a lot of people.”
