Photo by Josh Brasted/FilmMagic
“EARFQUAKE” is the breakout song from Tyler, The Creator’s latest album, IGOR, but it turns out the rapper didn’t originally create the track for himself. During a full performance of the album on Wednesday night in LA, Tyler revealed he wrote “EARFQUAKE” with Justin Bieber in mind. When Bieber passed, Tyler pitched it to Rihanna, who turned the song down as well.
“I made it in 2017. I wrote it for Bieber. He didn’t take it,” Tyler told the crowd. “So I hit Rihanna’s people up like, ‘Hey, I got this song. I would love for her to sing the hook. I think it’ll be big.’ I just want to write pop songs, honestly. I didn’t hear back from them, so I left my [reference] vocals in.”
Although Tyler hasn’t landed a big pop collaboration yet, he has worked with singers like Solange (“My Skin My Logo”) and Kali Uchis (“After the Storm”). He also linked up with Miley Cyrus for a Pharrell Williams-produced track titled “The Way I Feel” which was intended for Miley’s 2013 album, Bangerz, but didn’t make the final tracklist.
This isn’t the first time Tyler admitted to originally writing one of his songs for another artist. In September 2017, Tyler said he was saving his Flower Boy track, “See You Again,” for ZAYN:
Thanks in part to a standout verse from Playboi Carti, “EARFQUAKE” is by far the most popular IGOR track, with well over 700,000 total Genius pageviews. It’s also the most-streamed song from the album on Spotify with more than 22 million streams, and the Tracee Elis Ross-starring music video has racked up 8 million YouTube views and counting.
According to early projections, “EARFQUAKE” could land Tyler his first Top 10 entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
Watch the full concert below:
Listen to the song above, and read all the lyrics to Tyler, The Creator’s “EARFQUAKE” featuring Playboi Carti and Charlie Wilson on Genius now.
