Billie Eilish is echoing Tyler, The Creator’s Grammys speech about being put into a category that is more determined by his race than his music.
Tyler won the Grammy for Best Rap Album for IGOR, a largely experimental record where he did very little rapping at all. He noted: “On one side I’m very grateful that what I made could be acknowledged in a world like this, but also it sucks that whenever “we” – and I mean guys that look like me – do anything that’s genre-bending or that’s anything, they always put it in a rap or “urban” category which is – and I don’t like that “urban” word, it’s just a politically correct way to say the ‘N-word’ to me.”
“I have always hated categories,” Eilish said in a new interview with British GQ. “I hate when people say, ‘Oh, you look like ‘blank.’ You sound like ‘blank.’ It was such a cool thing Tyler said. I agree with him about that term. Don’t judge an artist off the way someone looks or the way someone dresses. Wasn’t Lizzo in the Best R&B category that night? I mean, she’s more pop than I am.”