New Zealand Drops Ban on Tyler, the Creator Ahead of AU/NZ Tour

Welcome back, Tyler.

It’s been a great month for Tyler, the Creator fans in the Southern Hemisphere.

Last week, it was announced that Tyler would return to Australia for the first time in six years to headline Queensland’s Wildlands Festival on 28 December. He was then named as co-headliner for Victoria’s end-of-year fest Beyond the Valley, as well as WA’s New Year’s bash Origin Fields (his specific dates to be confirmed).

Now, it’s been revealed by Stuff that Tyler is headed to New Zealand for the two-day Bay Dreams fest in January 2020 too. The last time Tyler visited the Land of the Long White Cloud? 2012, with Odd Future.

Why has it taken Tyler so long to come back to Australia and New Zealand?

As we wrote previously, Tyler was last set to tour down under back in 2015, to promote his album Cherry Bomb, but he was allegedly refused a visa per the Controversial Visa Applicant guidelines (likely due to explicit and problematic lyrics from his earlier albums Goblin and Bastard). Frontier Touring, however, refuted claims that his visa was refused; nonetheless, the tour was cancelled.

He was more explicitly banned from New Zealand in 2014 as part of the Odd Future collective, when Immigration NZ said, "there is, or is likely to be, a threat or risk to public order of the public interest". That earned them a mention in his song "Smuckers": "I got banned from New Zealand/ Whitey called me demon/ And a terrorist/ God dammit I couldn't believe it."

But now, Immigration NZ has told Stuff that Tyler’s visa has been approved, as he "is no longer deemed to be a potential threat to public order and the public interest", so, get ready for a lot of this:

What’s changed?

Tyler has certainly distanced himself from the comments and lyrics of his past, particularly with his more mature follow-up albums Flower Boy and Igor, and his life performances no longer incite the same kind of rowdy behaviour as before. His homophobic slurs have also been re-examined in the wake of those albums, in which he alludes to being queer himself.

Nonetheless, expect the outspoken rapper to make mention of his previous bans when he returns to our side of the planet at the end of 2019/early 2020.

Update (21/08):

AUSTRALIA * pic.twitter.com/dmnTqkBKWM

— Tyler, The Creator (@tylerthecreator) August 20, 2019

Header Image: YouTube (Tyler, The Creator)