Musician, rapper, singer and producer Tyler, The Creator who received the Best Rap Album Grammy for his 2019 record IGOR on Sunday night has slammed the Annual Grammy Awards for what he believes to be racism in creating categories for awards.

Tyler’s musical style has swum in and out of various genres and themes, somehow retaining the past each time. From gritty, dark horrorcore (although he distances himself from the term) tones in records like Goblin and Bastard to increasingly jazzy, soulful approaches with the albums Cherry Bomb and Flower Boy, which saw glimpses of a tender, glittery side to the artist, Tyler has long stayed away from normative styles of production, and only received mainstream popularity with his more pop-esque albums Flower Boy and IGOR.

When asked about talk surrounding voting and selection processes at the Grammys, Tyler said (above) that whenever people “that look like me do anything that’s genre-bending, they always put it in a rap or ‘urban’ category.” He added, “I don’t like that ‘urban’ word, it’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word to me. So when I hear that word, I’m like ‘Why can’t we just be in ‘pop’? You know what I mean?”

Tyler also said the the award felt something of a “backhanded compliment, like ‘Oh, uh, my little cousin wants to play the game so let’s give him an unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it.’”

Here is the complete interview.

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