Tyler the Creator came under some serious fire recently after an ad campaign he created for Mountain Dew was viewed as racist and sexist by critics. Well now the controversial rapper is speaking out about the commercial and says the whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion!
Most notably, Syracuse University Professor Boyce Watkins called it "arguably the most racist commercial in history." But Tyler just does't understand where he's getting that idea, saying:
"I guess people are claiming that it's racist, which... you know, that wasn't even portrayed in that commercial, there's no type of hate being portrayed in that work of art at all -- which I'm confused by. But this older black dude, Dr. Boyce Watkins, I guess he found it racist because I was portraying stereotypes, which is ridiculous because, one, all of those dudes [in the line-up] are my friends. Two, they're all basically in their own clothes."
Dr. Watkins has since backtracked on his comments towards Tyler, although we doubt he'll appreciate being called "this older black dude!"
He went on to say that he was simply looking forward to the challenge of directing the videos, which is one of his passions:
"I like film, and I like directing, and that's where my heart was set. I wasn't thinking, 'Oh, let's use all black [people]' or whatever. I wanted to use my friends. You know why? ‘Cause I don't like using other actors. You can look at every one of my videos, and my friends are always in it."
Well that explains that. What about the woman-beating goat? He explains:
"It's just a goat. I just think a goat is funny. It's no deeper meaning. They said, "Tyler, you can come up with any commercial that you want." I said, "You wanna know what's funny to me and my friends? An animal talking." Why? Cause animals don't talk in real life, so let's make an animal talk. What's a funny animal? A f---ing goat."
Basically, Tyler finds the same things a 3 year-old would find funny!
He also said he was surprised people took it so seriously considering how ridiculous the video is:
"Everyone in my generation or my age or whatever you wanna call it, either said, 'Wow this is funny, Tyler did another stupid funny thing,' or they said, 'This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen.'"
Well we definitely agree with it being one of the stupidest things we've seen!
At the end of the day, it looks like Tyler and his friends were simply making a dumb video for fun and didn't really care how it would be viewed by others! Although we're still surprised that Mountain Dew approached him to make an ad in the first place and then AIRED it! Have they never listened to his music before??
[Image via Winston Burris/WENN .]
via PerezHilton http://perezhilton.com/2013-05-04-tyler-the-creator-defends-mountain-dew-ads-says-they-were-simply-meant-to-be-funny
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