Tyler, The Creator makes a provocative playground out of All Points East

Dressed to the nines in DON’T TAP THE GLASS regalia, patrons bring their best red leathers and dookie chains to the much-publicised dustbowl of All Points East for Tyler, The Creator – but no one is foreign to the festival’s difficult terrain. After a week’s worth of billowing plume captures and black snot storytimes, black bandanas are, predictably, the hottest accessory in sight. What’s unprecedented is the back-and-forth between light shower and flash flood that arrives with biblical enthusiasm across the bank holiday weekend. All Points East coincides with end-of-summer celebrations; for many Londoners it also serves as a prelude to Notting Hill Carnival festivities. While it cannot necessarily be described as a grand return to the UK – succeeding three dates at The O2 for his 2025 CHROMAKOPIA world tour – Tyler, The Creator’s takeover still arrives at a significant point in his career. His controversial history, tainted by explicit edgelord tweets, rears its ugly head whenever social media wishes to circle back. Yet, it has made his ascent into one of the world’s most bankable rap artists all the more unlikely. Due to obscene lyrics in his early music that “encourage violence ...