Ian Responds to Tyler, the Creator in New Freestyle: ‘Never Sat Down Trying to Mock Future’

Ian has responded to comments Tyler, the Creator made in an interview last year that many perceived as a diss directed at him.

In a freestyle for Lyrical Lemonade’s Lunch Break Freestyle series that was released on Monday, Ian directly name-dropped Tyler’s former collective Odd Future and indicated that he didn’t want to offend anyone with his music. “Back then, I really loved Odd Future / I ain’t never sat down tryna’ mock Future,” he raps in the track, as seen above. “I ain’t wanna show no disrespect, so I kept my mouth shut and that’s not human / damn, would’ve been a dumbass thing to do.”

The lyrics are clearly a response to an interview Tyler did with Maverick Carter last year. In the clip, the former Odd Future frontman called out a “white kid, regular Caucasian man” for making music that he perceived to be “mocking Future and Gucci Mane.”

“It’s not even like satire, it’s like, ‘I’m just joking, I’m just mocking it,’ but I’m like, ‘No, no, no, you can’t do—and I hold rap music so close to my heart ’cause this shit changed my life and everyone’s life around me and I’m a nerd about this shit,” he said. While he didn’t directly name who he was talking about, many assumed he was referring to Ian, who was gearing up to release his debut album, Goodbye Horses, at the time.

Tyler also made similar comments in the Chromakopia track “Thought I Was Dead,” in which he rapped: “White boys mocking this shit and y’all mad at me / Y’all can suck my dick / Pull up old tweets, pull up old t-shirts, all that / I’ll moonwalk over that bitch.”