For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 all the next two weeks. Last week, we revealed our Honorable Mentions artists for 2025 as well as our Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year artists. Now, we kick off our top 10 with an artist who kept the pedal to the floor for 2025, trying new sounds and new mediums and ending up more ubiquitous than ever: Tyler, The Creator.
Listen to our Greatest Pop Stars podcast discussion about Tyler’s first year making our 10 Greatest Pop Stars list here.
About 15 years ago, in February 2011, a menacing group of young adults set the internet ablaze with its anarchic musical performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The rabble-rousers of Odd Future took their off-color, Tumblr-coded rap music to network television – and their appearance marked their introduction to the mainstream.
But at the time, and for years after, Odd Future’s ringleader and breakout talent, Tyler, The Creator, seemed an unlikely candidate to ever transcend cult status. Odd Future’s left-field aesthetic and at-times nauseating lyrical content was a non-starter for many. Later that year, GLAAD denounced Odd Future’s homophobic and misogynistic subject matter; as late as 2015, the U.K. banned Tyler from entry due to his lyrics. All par for the course for an artist whose signature lyric up to that point was “KILL PEOPLE BURN S—T F—K SCHOOL.”
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A decade later, however, Tyler is an integral part of the pop cultural fabric, both domestically and abroad. Today, his high-concept hip-hop has placed him in rarefied air with rap superstars like Kendrick Lamar and Drake, with Grammy wins, lucrative world tours and impressive chart success — a position he cemented with his massive 2025.
Tyler’s transformation from skate-rap misfit to hip-hop A-lister started in 2017, when he released Flower Boy, a conceptually ambitious project dealing with loneliness and sexuality that fused rap, jazz, and neo-soul — and kicked off a streak of four consecutive records nominated for the best rap album Grammy. With 2019’s Igor and 2021’s Call Me If You Get Lost, Tyler continued to redefine himself as an artist, and while his material didn’t exactly lose its edge, it became less confrontational and drew in legions of new fans — including at the Grammys, where both sets won best rap album.
Tyler’s 2025 effectively began in October 2024, with the release of that fourth-consecutive best rap album Grammy nominee, Chromakopia. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and all 14 Chromakopia songs charted on the Billboard Hot 100; that month, three of its songs – “St. Chroma,” “Noid” and “Sticky” — became Tyler’s first three top 10 entries on the Hot 100. And unlike many high-profile rap releases today, the album – which featured Doechii, Sexyy Red, Lil Wayne, Daniel Caesar and Lola Young, among others – stuck around on the charts: When the calendar had turned, and the glut of holiday singles had receded, three Chromakopia songs remained on the Hot 100.
Tyler carried that momentum into the Chromakopia world tour, a nearly-100-date trek that kicked off in February – when he played six sold-out shows at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena – and took him to arenas from North America to Europe to Asia, securing him a No. 11 rank on Billboard’s Top Tours chart for 2025, with $174.5 million grossed. Along the way, he headlined major festivals, including Governors Ball, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands. For years, Tyler’s concerts had been spectacles, and the pyro-laden Chromakopia was no different.
But by July, the creatively restless rapper threw fans a curveball: the surprise-released Don’t Tap The Glass, a 28-minute project that eschewed Chromakopia‘s grandiosity for a tight set of funky electronic bangers. Before the Chromakopia tour had even wrapped for 2025 (a brief Latin American leg is on tap for this March), Tyler was debuting Don’t Tap the Glass material at sweaty, club-inspired pop-up shows. Like Chromakopia and its two predecessors, Don’t Tap the Glass debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200; all 10 of its songs hit the Hot 100. The set’s “Sugar on My Tongue” became a breakout hit, spending 25 weeks (and counting) on the chart to become Tyler’s second-longest-running Hot 100 entry. Don’t Tap the Glass also scored a 2026 Grammy nomination for best alternative music album, meaning Tyler could take home not one, but two album Grammys in genre categories this February.
At the same time, Tyler notched another accomplishment as one of the select few guests to appear on Clipse’s comeback album, Let God Sort Em Out, produced by his longtime musical lodestar, Pharrell Williams. The song he appeared on, “P.O.V.,” landed on the Hot 100 and represented a full-circle moment: One of the first established rap artists to champion Tyler was Clipse’s Pusha T, who featured the then-20-year-old on his 2011 single “Trouble on My Mind.” Clipse also played a small role in the Don’t Tap the Glass launch, making cameos – alongside LeBron James and his business associate Maverick Carter – in the music video for that album’s “Stop Playing With Me.” Next month, Tyler will face off against Clipse – and himself – when Chromakopia and Let God Sort Em Out both vie for the album of the year and best rap album Grammys.
A mammoth 2025, to be sure. But before the year wrapped, Tyler had another zeitgeist-seizing moment up his sleeve – on the silver screen, as Tyler Okonma. On Christmas Day, the Josh Safdie-directed, A24-distributed, Timothée Chalamet-starring ping-pong period drama Marty Supreme hit theaters, and featured Tyler in a prominent supporting role. As Wally, a taxi-driving buddy of Chalamet’s unstoppable Marty Mauser, Tyler stole each of his scenes, matching Chalamet’s energy and proving his charisma extends well beyond recording studios and festival stages. Since the start of his career, Tyler has directed many of his own music videos and played a key role in the creative direction of his concerts; Marty Supreme may be the first Oscar contender he’s had a hand in, but it’s likely not his last.
For Tyler, it’s all somewhat poetic: The artist who once scared parents and grandparents who’d stayed up late to catch Fallon now appearing in a bona fide Christmas blockbuster, after a year where his music found more ears than it ever had before. As head-spinning as it might be for his Odd Future day ones, given his last decade, there’s little reason to think Tyler won’t become even more ubiquitous — mainstream, even — in the years.
Listen to our Tyler, The Creator Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 discussion here, check back for our No. 9 artist tomorrow, and stay tuned the next two weeks as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 on Friday, Jan. 30!
