STYLE IS NEVER dependent upon resources, just as taste isn't determined by a price tag. The truly stylish, and those with intriguing taste, rarely begin developing their personal aesthetic at the point when their bank balance reflects their success. For Tyler, the Creator, two-time Grammywinning artist, producer, director, composer and designer, the collecting bug that set in motion the eclectic nature of his passions and career started with, well, Hot Wheels.
“I didn't play with toys much as a kid,” he says, “but Hot Wheels… was definitely my number one collection. I had probably seven, and some I kept until my teen years.”
Tyler Okonma, as he was known back then, is a professional chameleon. His past several albums have involved creating personas he inhabits for the promotional cycle of the project and then switches out for whatever's next. His last two releases both won Best Rap Album Grammys and brought him global attention.
Of all the obsessions you see on these pages – many long-lived, some relatively new – music remains his first love. On the days we spend with him in Los Angeles, Tyler, 31, is constantly humming, crooning and rhyming. In the past 15 years, he has veered from alt rap to rock to soul and rhythm and blues, but always with hip-hop overtones, knowingwordplay and araised eyebrow. And in the accompanying videos, which he directs himself (as Wolf Haley), he has offered glimpses of an interior world he's fiercely protective of.
He's never invited anyone in – until now. “I'm a pretty private dude, so doing this for was a big task for me,” he says. So why do it at all? His answer speaks to how he approaches his work and, to an extent, his
