The Tyler, the Creator Film That May or May Not Exist

Tyler, the Creator—everyone else’s favorite rapper, or so it always seemed—put out a trailer for a film called Wolf in fall 2013, and it contained what appeared to be footage of a bicycle and a boy getting beaten up. That was the full offer. No release date, no distributor, no signal from the Odd Future collective that anyone involved knew when this thing would see daylight.

I find Tyler more interesting as a phenomenon than as a rapper, which I realize says something unflattering about both of us. He operates in a kind of controlled unraveling—everything looks like it might fall apart, but it never quite does. The Wolf album was already out that year, and the film felt like an extension of the same restless, unfinished energy: a universe leaking out of his head in fragments, on his schedule, when he feels like it. I half-expected everyone would have forgotten who Tyler was before the thing ever actually dropped.