Tyler The Creator just wants to write pop songs now. At least, that’s what he told the crowd at the special Apple Music performance of his new album, Igor. The not-so-secret show took place last night in LA (technically, Van Nuys) and was live-streamed to the internet via Apple as Tyler performed and talked about songs from Igor.
In the monologue preceding an energetic performance of the album single “Earfquake,” Tyler revealed that he originally wrote the song for Justin Bieber. When Bieber turned it down, he reached out to “Rihanna’s people,” but never heard back. So, he left his reference vocals intact and reworked it into a song for his own album — which turned out to be a great idea, as “Earfquake” is currently the most-streamed song from the album.
“I made [“EARFQUAKE”] like May of 2017 and I wrote it for Bieber. He didn’t take it, so I hit Rihanna people up. I was like ‘Hey, I have this song, I would love for her to sing the hook, I think it will be big.’ I just wanna write pop songs, honestly. I didn’t hear back from them, so I left my [reference] vocals in.”
Tyler also addressed the inspiration behind other songs from album, including “A Boy Is A Gun,” “New Magic Wand,” and “Puppet.”
