Contrary to reports making the rounds, Tyler, The Creator won’t be changing his stage name. During a previous interview with Fast Company, the Grammy-award winning artist spoke about the origins of his stage name and how “dumb” it felt at the time.
“My stage name was from, I made a MySpace page when I was 13 – I had 3 of them, one was regular for friends, another one was for something else, and then the third one was just ideas,” Tyler said. “I would put drawings and photos I would take, and I would upload beats on there. I started using that one more and random people from Kentucky would be, like, ‘Cool beats, bro!’ And so I just kept the Tyler, The Creator thing going and, you know, I’m 17 in high school, around LA, the name’s getting around, and I kind of just kept it as my stage name.”
“It’s really dumb, but it stuck with me so it just works,” he added.
In the conversation, Tyler talked about wanting to embrace his government name more now that he’s older.
“But my full name, Tyler Okonma, in all caps just looks really cool,” he said. “So you might see more of that, I don’t know, I’m getting older and I think when people get older they start to realize shit, you just start changing.”
His comments were apparently taken out of context and it was assumed the Call Me If You Get Lost emcee was considering switching to his birth name. However, Tyler, The Creator has come out to put an end to the speculations.
“I NEVER SAID I WAS CHANGING MY NAME, ARE YOU STUPID? YES,” he tweeted in all caps.
He continued (in all caps). “WILL EMBRACE MY LAST NAME MORE, LESS WOLF HALEY, NEVER SAID I WAS GONNA CHANGE MY STAGE NAME, WHAT YO EARS ON BRO?”
He went on to explain his reactions after a fan asked him for context.
“INTERVIEWER ASKED ABOUT MY STAGE NAME, I EXPLAINED HOW I GOT IT, I JOKED ABOUT IT BEING DUMB BUT KEPT IT. TALKED ABOUT MY AFRICAN LAST NAME HOW I WANT TO EMBRACE IT NOW THAT IM OLDER AND HAVE A NEW VIEW ON IT. SITES SAYS IM CHANGING IT. FALSE. FROM THE SOURCE IN CASE U BELIEVED.”
Though he typed in all caps – which has been used to denote anger – Tyler made sure to note he wasn’t mad.
“ALL CAPS MAKES YOU THINK THE PERSON IS MAD OR SOMETHING HA, WILD IT GIVES OFF THAT EMOTION JUST BEING UPPERCASE.”
Checkout his full tweets below.