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Known for his aggressive lyrics and unpredictable stage antics, rapper Tyler Gregory Okonma (better known as Tyler, The Creator) has become somewhat of a pop culture renaissance man. He leads the rap group Odd Future, has a clothing brand, his own TV show on Adult Swim and he even has his own carnival.
Camp Flog Gnaw started in 2012 and has grown into a music festival with rides, a skate park and more. Tyler says he initially wanted to have a carnival for his "Goblin" album release in 2011:
I wanted to shut down Fairfax and throw a carnival. I was like, 'Can we get a carnival? Get, like, two rides and I don't know, I'll do a performance there.' The city wouldn't give us a permit to have a block party with all that stuff. So, like, maybe a year later, we just start brainstorming and it turned into what it is now. Which is sick, cause like, I wanna design skate parks. Like, a real one in L.A., so this also gives me the chance to practice with that.
Tyler's fascination with carnivals came at an early age when he was growing up in Hawthorne. He says he grew up around gang banging and, "always had to be hard, like, even in schools, but it was something about the carnival, where like, everyone there was just in a good mood."
One of his main attractions to carnivals are the rides. "They had this ride called The Zipper," he says, "That is one of my favorite rides ever. And I always wanted to have a camp or something sick like that. Like, I always wanted to throw my own festival with only artists that I like."
The only problem, he says, is there aren't a lot of artists he likes. "So trying to have a festival that sells tickets, when the only thing you like is Death Grips and Marvin Gaye's 'Cudi' album that no one knows about — it's hard to get people to buy tickets."
He isn't having too much trouble attracting an audience for Camp Flog Gnaw. The festival has grown in attendance since its first year and Tyler expects to attract more than 20,000 attendees for this year's event: The fact that we could throw a carnival ... and it's people from Denmark and Nebraska [attending], just coming together all for a good cause, to have fun, is really sick."
Camp Flog Gnaw takes place at Exposition Park on Saturday, Nov. 8.