In 2012, Tyler, the Creator was banned from entering New Zealand. Now, seven years on, the rapper has had his restriction lifted by immigration officials, who say he is “no longer deemed to be a potential threat to public order and the public interest.”
As a result of the ban being lifted, Tyler is free to headline the Bay Dreams festival in New Zealand in January 2020, where he’ll perform two shows.
Tyler has touched on the ban in the past, with his 2014 Cherry Bomb track ‘Smuckers’. “I got banned from New Zealand, whitey called me a demon / And a terrorist, God damn it, I couldn’t believe it,” he rapped.
New Zealand isn’t the only country to have barred Tyler from entering at one point.
For four years, Tyler was refused entry into the UK, with a ban imposed when Theresa May was Home Secretary, over the content of his lyrics. At the time, the Home Office claimed the rapper “encourages violence and intolerance of homosexuality” and “fosters hatred with views that seek to provoke others to terrorist acts”.
In 2016, when May became Prime Minister, Tyler commented “That fucking sucks. Y’all fucking up over there.”
Earlier this year, however, he returned to perform a pop-up show in London in support of latest studio album IGOR, that was later shut down. At the time, The Guardian reported that “the ban, which was originally imposed for three to five years, no longer applies and he is able to enter the UK legally.
He’s, of course, been denied entry here, too. In 2015, on the eve of an Australian tour, the rapper tweeted that he’d been “banned” from Australia, after the organisation Collective Shout lobbied against his entry. Given that Tyler is set to tour Australia towards the end of the year on a number of festival lineups, it would appear that the ban has been lifted here as well.
