This is my latest version of having a record I love and playing it every day for 500 years. I’ve always loved Tyler, but I was not prepared for how that record would blow me away. What I love is that it is such a queer record without having to say, ‘here I am having my big queer experience’. It’s just saying, ‘this is what happened to me and this is what this record is’. It’s about the breakup of a relationship. You can’t quite work out how one-sided it was. Obviously, he’s completely infatuated with this person. It’s an arc. There’s that infatuation at the beginning working to the big finale, ‘Are We Still Friends?’ You have to work through the ins and outs of how two-sided that is but what I was more interested in was how he allowed himself to be so vulnerable. You don’t get a lot of that in hip hop, or in many artists to be honest. There’s always that shield between us. It’s filtered. This was so raw. Then you see how he presents it live and it’s such a beautiful juxtaposition of vulnerability and power. There’s a certain strength of the mind you have as an artist to take that vulnerability and manouevre it through a creative position. It’s so inspiring. You can see how he himself increased in power by doing those shows. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
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