DJ Khaled was publicly bitter about his defeat to Tyler

Tyler, the Creator; DJ Khaled. CREDIT: Scott Legato/Getty Images; Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images for LivexLive

Tyler, The Creator has said that he watched DJ Khaled “die inside” after he lost out in a Number One US album chart battle.

The rapper’s album ‘IGOR‘ claimed the Number One spot upon its release in 2019 over DJ Khaled’s ‘Father Of Ashad‘.

At the time Khaled wrote online in a since-deleted post: “I make albums so people can play it and you actually hear it. You know, driving your car, you hear another car playing it. You know, go to the barbershop, you hear them playing it. You know, turn the radio on, and you hear them playing it. It’s called great music. It’s called albums that you actually hear the songs. Not no mysterious shit that you never hear it.”

Speaking on Hot 97 on Friday (August 6) Tyler said that the stand-off was “fun” and that he felt like he was “watching a man die inside”.

“That Khaled thing, it was fun. It was just watching a man die inside because the weirdo is winning,” he said. “I was moonwalking in a wig. This n**** had everyone on his album, everyone!”

However he admitted that it wasn’t all competitive fun. “A piece of me really didn’t like that at all because I make music, but rap is my thing. I was already making alternative rap and not fully being accepted by the BETs…but for some guy to kinda indirectly be like, ‘That ain’t real rap, that ain’t real Black music.’ That’s what it felt like, and I was like, ‘My n***a.’ But I didn’t say nothing, I just let that Number One speak.”

He continued of DJ Khaled: “N***a ego had to deal with that because his whole identity is being Number One and when he didn’t get that, that sat with him longer in real life time than that moment. I moved on.

“His whole identity is ‘We the Best, we the Number One’. When the underdog to him took that away from him, that n***a ego was deflated. He’ll probably never admit it and it’s no hard feelings towards him.”

Elsewhere in the interview Tyler said he doesn’t think Odd Future would have “made it” if they had emerged in 2021.

The rapper first broke through as a member of the Los Angeles rap group in 2007, which also featured the likes of Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt and The Internet’s Syd.

Speaking in a new interview with Ebro Darden, Laura Stylez, and Peter Rosenberg on Hot 97, Tyler was asked by Rosenberg if Odd Future would have made it in 2021. “Oh, fuck no!” Tyler responded. “We came at the right time where you could still be crazy – you could still be a kid and fuck up.”