Tyler, The Creator’s 2025 run wasn’t just impressive — it was a flex from one of the most inventive minds in modern music. Over the past year, listeners logged more than 4.5 billion minutes of his music on Apple Music, marking his strongest year ever on the platform. Much of that momentum came from CHROMAKOPIA, his most personal and fully realised world-building project to date, which broke his own first-day and first-week streaming records.

But in classic Tyler fashion, he didn’t coast. Mid-tour, he dropped DON’T TAP THE GLASS, a lean and urgent rap detour that shot to No. 1 in more than 55 countries and cemented his status as a genre-shifting force. Add in headlining sets at Governors Ball, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and Osheaga, plus the return of L.A.’s Camp Flog Gnaw, and you get a portrait of an artist operating at peak velocity.

“His creativity has been incredible all year,” said Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. Tyler kept it simple: “To everyone who listens to my music, thank you… Please keep supporting folks who are a bit out of the box.”

With his feature-film debut in Marty Supreme on the way and five new GRAMMY nominations, Tyler’s footprint in 2025 goes well beyond music — but the music alone was enough to earn him the crown.