Back when Tyler The Creator won his second Grammy for Best Rap Album, he made sure to troll DJ Khaled in a video on Instagram, razzing the producer, “I know you’re seething and angry and [saying], ‘Ugh, no one listens to that album!’ These arena tours that are selling out say different, and if you put that much energy into something, maybe everyone will be proud of you too.”
It had by that time become a tradition for Tyler to roast Khaled with his wins after fans determined that Khaled was angry about Tyler’s album Igor outselling his album Father Of Asahd in 2019. But in a new feature for Rolling Stone, Khaled insisted that he and Tyler are actually on good terms and that both instances were just Tyler being Tyler. According to Rolling Stone‘s Jeff Ihaza:
He also tells me he’d like to work with Tems and, surprisingly, Tyler, the Creator, with whom he says he has a good rapport, despite a social media tussle when Father of Asahd was beaten out by Tyler’s Igor on the charts in 2019. (He says they chopped it up at Jay-Z’s Roc Nation brunch earlier this year.)
The tradition of Tyler’s trolling stemmed from a 2019 video Khaled posted on Snapchat in which he addressed haters of his boisterous style and questioned what he actually does. After another rant from Khaled in which he complained that Billboard had discounted several of his album’s sales without warning, the video was reposted on Twitter and presented as a rant about Tyler’s album outselling his.
Unfortunately, once the narrative had solidified, Tyler himself joined in, and while they likely hashed out the misunderstanding behind the scenes, Tyler’s nothing if not a masterful troll, and has taken every opportunity to entertain fans with some lighthearted trash talk. Should the two actually work together for real, though, it’ll surely be a fun moment for hip-hop — especially those fans who are in on the above context.