Recently, Tyler has begun to take this glamorized imagery, and the lifestyle it represents, to task. On the collection of songs he's currently recording, he offers up heavy-handed indictments of gang culture and rapper consumerism, calling them detrimental not just to the progress of his race, but to humanity as a whole. He recites a minute-long, white-knuckle verse from a demo he refers to as "Run" that condemns cyclical gang violence: Oh you the big nigga? Took a hit, nigga?/ Well, I hope you understand you ain't shit, nigga/ Cause them niggas' whole purpose is to get niggas/ And make sure that your momma cry the pain out. On "Keep the O's," another work-in-progress, he stabs an index finger at his rap peers, mocking an extravagance he sees as being built on debt: Your garden is full from raking these hoes/ A handful of green and a couple of stones/ Your lawnmower's foreign, you rent you a home/ But nigga how much of that shit do you own?

After years of obsessive self-analysis in his music, it seems Tyler is beginning to hold his magnifying glass up to the world around him. "The Tyler you're used to is, 'Fuck, I hate my dad!'" he says. "You know where I'm at right now? I hate everything. You have fucking people like Morgan Freeman and Oprah, and all these positive black people who fucking figured it out and found their wings. Sometimes, shit is fucked up. But I've been with niggas where you got a case, you hotbox your auntie's car, you driving real fast, the police pull you over, take you to jail, and then your friends are like, 'Free Tony! Free Tony! Fuck the ops!' No, you dumbass, if this nigga wasn't doing some stupid nigga shit like riding around in his aunt's car with no license, smoking weed, and doing 80 in a 30, he wouldn't be fucking arrested right now," he says. He doesn't register that he just demonstrated a similar contempt for authority behind the wheel on a dusty bend of road.

It's the kind of contrarian outlook that we've come to expect from Tyler, but that doesn't make it any less controversial. "I'm not the only one saying this shit, bro," he stresses. "Nas said it on ' 2nd Childhood.' Clipse said it on 'Hello New World.'" But what about his thousands of white fans that frequent his store, use slang from his songs, and shout the N-word at his shows? Aren't they set up for success way better than a kid like hypothetical Tony, or the real teenagers in neighborhoods plagued by racism and violence? "I get it," Tyler concedes. "But at a certain age, man, you have to think, 'What the fuck do I want to be? What do I want to do? Okay, what are the steps that I have to take to get that?' You can end up dead, shot by a cop, in jail. Nothing positive. Niggas choose their own destinies. It's like the choose-your-own-adventure books, fucking by Goosebumps. I want everyone to fucking win. If everyone wins, everyone is smiling. And if everyone is smiling, everyone is happy. And when everyone is happy, we won't have niggas killing each other no more."