Stream It Or Skip It: ‘RapCaviar Presents’ on Hulu, A Hip-Hop Docuseries With Star Profiles And An Appetite For Big Questions

Inspired by the Spotify playlist of the same name that boasts a 15 million-plus follower count, the Hulu docuseries RapCaviar Presents explores larger issues of artistry, culture, perception, and media through profiles of contemporary hip-hop’s tastemakers and boundary breakers. First up is Tyler the Creator, who has most recently logged two consecutive Grammy awards for Best Rap Album; the series will also feature City Girls, Roddy Ricch, Coi Leray, and Polo G, amongst others.

RAPCAVIAR PRESENTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “Hip-hop has become so huge that everybody’s a part of hip-hop now,” Tyler the Creator says over footage from the Madison Square Garden stop on his Call Me If You Get Lost arena tour. He’s in a boat on stage, navigating. “It used to look like a costume,” Tyler says. “You look now, and there’s so many different styles to this thing that we call hip-hop.”

The Gist: Back in the mid-2000s, when he was first shepherding his Odd Future collective out of California and into the larger consciousness – or bursting into it, more like it, with a penchant for creative left turns, fringey vlogs, and musical explorations without patience for convention – it was immediately apparent that Tyler the Creator was on some shit. Right from the beginning, he was a boundary pusher, RapCaviar narrator Carl Chery says. “Experimenting with different looks and sounds, part of a new generation that continues to challenge the perceptions of masculinity.” Or as Tyler puts it, “bravado rap” wasn’t designed for him. The music he was making, says Charles Holmes of Rolling Stone, and the look and feel of Tyler’s persona, was “bright, colorful, and way more chaotic” than any prefab music industry box. 

But while his clicks, likes, followers, and fans steadily increased as he flouted traditional industry metrics, Tyler had to confront that his antics had become his visual brand. He was now the silly guy. “Oh fuck,” he remembers thinking. “I’m not known for my music. I didn’t put music first. Oh, I can’t be silly for like a year.” Silly was fun, impromptu, powerful. But there was also value in being invited in.

“‘Fuck you, I’ll make my own table. I’ll make my own chair.’ So you over there making your own chair, and man, you make the illest chair. You gonna make an illest house. But you still wanna be invited for dinner on Thursday at they house, you know what I mean? So that’s what it was, you know. Just not feeling fully embraced.”

It was a 2015 European tour with Pharrel Williams that Tyler says opened his eyes to fully aligning his creative self with making successful records. He dug deep into the structural elements of songwriting, listened to every kind of music on the planet, and flipped a switch to make it happen. “When you mix that with the knowledge and passion you already have, it just creates this new fucking level.” And Tyler the Creator challenged hip-hop’s dominant hypermasculinity by donning a blonde bob wig and making IGOR, which in 2020 won him his first Best Rap Album Grammy.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Karam Gill, who directs Tyler the Creator’s installment of RapCaviar Presents, was also at the helm for the contemplative 2022 doc Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby (Prime Video). And the intersection of creative drive and skyrocketing fame takes a more harrowing turn in Juice Wrld: Into the Abyss, a 2021 HBO documentary about the late rapper in which Tyler makes an appearance.

Our Take: Pharrell Williams, interviewed in RapCaviar Presents, recalls what he told Tyler the Creator back in 2015, and it might as well be an axiom for all of our lives. “Make something undeniable and make it equally as infectious. Why are you doin’ music? Is it just because you just wanna look cool? Because that will burn out. When it becomes purpose-oriented, it can be as cool as the flashy shit but it will be much more meaningful.” (Williams actually proves to be a quote machine throughout RapCaviar; later, he calls Tyler “a multidisciplinary pluralist.”) And it’s interesting to see and hear Tyler the Creator describe that inspiration, and how Williams’ encouragement led him to make music that, while still furiously creative, also achieved greater commercial success. Losing out on one Best Rap Album nomination led to him grabbing the hardware for two albums in a row, and his most successful arena tour to date.

There are larger questions presented here, too, especially in how Tyler’s career clashes against depictions of Black men in the media. (soundbites from Bob Dole and Donald Trump surface briefly to propagate ideas of “superpredators” and criminals, coded language for racist paranoia.) But RapCaviar Presents maintains a steady narrative pace that places this discussion in the context of how Tyler the Creator reacted against it with an intrinsic understanding of his own potential. “The way society is,” he says, “they tell you it’s a certain way you have to be, and I just knew in my fucking soul that that’s not for me.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing overt, but in days of Odd Future vlogs, many dicks were drawn on walls.

Parting Shot: Vince Staples summarizes Tyler the Creator’s career thusly. “Anyone who’s being honest with they self, and true to they self, and is just giving the world, you know, a piece of them, the vulnerability of it, the risk of it, I think it’s pushing the culture forward. And Tyler’s been doing it for over a decade.” And outside his MSG concert, Tyler’s fans deliver testimonials to the camera. For many of these kids, he’s inspired them to proudly embrace their own brand of weird. 

Sleeper Star: The opening titles of RapCaviar Presents are both impressive and impressionistic, referencing hip-hop’s media history – LPs, cassettes, radio and television – while simultaneously seeming to exist outside of that milieu with touches of whimsy and references to street art.  

Most Pilot-y Line: “All of the antics,” music journalist Charles Holmes says, “sometimes distract from the fact that, like, yo, Tyler the Creator is a student of the game. Tyler the Creator is a – He’s good at rapping.” In other words, don’t get swayed by the silly. This guy came for real.

Our Call: STREAM IT. RapCaviar Presents kicks off with an interesting, contextual look at one of music’s most provocative and inspirational artists, ultimately proving that the boxes and genres our culture relies on are just limiting factors on individuality and creative juice.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges