Homosexuality and Hip-Hop : The Gay Rapper Thread

It's kind of a cheap irony, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

(I guess you could draw a similar/stronger line with first-wave hip hop's dico roots, as also per the house comments above...)

Lil' Kim's frequently rapping about how she quite likes lesbians - there's even a song where she tells Puff Daddy not to yell "dyke" at them - in some ways I think the lesbian is almost upheld within ho-rap as the ultimate in self-empowered independence - though that said, I get the impression that flirtation with lesbianism would still be a male-porn style prelude to the main event.

This isn't something I've even heard of before, but if it's true, it might explain why he bit a Bowie song.

I dunno about Dre = gay. Calling your former-friend "punk-ass faggot," etc., figures pretty prominently in the various Ruthless/Death Row/and so on feuds. Witness Cube's "No Vaseline," Dre or Ren "talking to that bitch O'Shea," as just a couple instances.

Re: James Brown I read an interview with someone who'd been on tour with him, 60s or 70s, about him bringing along an effeminate male companion for his pleasure. I don't have trouble buying this.

*(i didn't read it if he did, so this may not be fair)

I saw evidence to the contrary a couple months ago while watching a clip I saw of him performing on SNL in 1980. Unless he used a prosthesis.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0005/trebay.php

Then again, would any drag queen use lip liner to that extent?

I think the gay scene rarely follows trends - and hip hop as a genre is just so outdated, it's too way back there for gays.... the fashions may seep into gay culture, the music - nah. Too violent, too ugly and impossible to dance to.

....wasn't Rock Hudson 'married' too?

There is a book called The Vinyl Closet, written by Boze Hadleigh, but it was published in 1991, is out of print and hard to find, and the information is outdated. It's still a fun read. There are interviews with closeted musicians (usually seventies has-beens) in which they are referred to by their first initial only.

*(I have no idea where yr talking about - they in the United States?)

I gotta ask--if hip-hop is way too back there in terms of innovation, where exactly is diva house?

i think Em and Dre did this intentionally

Yes, we were sleeping in high school math class, were we?

HEADLINE: Gay Rappers: Too Real For Hip-Hop?

BYLINE: By TOURE; Toure, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, is the author of "The Portable Promised Land," a collection of short stories.

BODY:

IT'S Friday night in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and Caushun is chilling on the third floor of his parents' brownstone. He is totally street: baggy jeans, wrist bands, fresh black Timberlands, a diamond stud in his left ear and a baseball cap (worn to the back, at an angle) with his name spray-painted across the bill in graffiti bubble letters. Caushun is a rapper, and he's getting ready to rhyme, but right now he's flipping through Vogue. He did Kimora Lee Simmons's hair for her photo shoot, and he wants to see how it turned out.

Caushun can get fierce with some hair. "I'm nasty with mine," he said.

He calls himself "the weave king," an extensions specialist. He's done hairdos for J-Lo and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and he's the stereotype of the celebrity hairdresser. He's a b-boy with a poodle named Wesley and an apartment with ornate pillows with silk flowers on them and beautiful vases filled with giant lilies. Caushun is a 25-year-old openly gay rapper from the same neighborhood as Biggie Smalls, with flippy wrists, a gay twang and a flow that is liquid and cool and ready for the big time. He wants to be hip-hop's homosexual Jackie Robinson.

Hip-hop is now as large a cultural stage as baseball was in the 50's, yet the mainstream is just as closed to gay rappers as the major leagues were to black men before Robinson. And, as with Robinson, for Caushun to break through could have a profound impact on how gay people are perceived throughout America.

"He's going to open up discussion about one of the last acceptable prejudices," said his manager, Ivan Matias. "With homosexuals having so much influence over hip-hop from behind the scenes, it's time that they had a voice." He was referring to the gay executives, managers, stylists and magazine editors in the music business.

Caushun said simply: "Look, I'm keepin' it real. Don't let me find out that I'm keepin' it too real for hip-hop. Should that be the name of my album? 'Too Real for Hip-Hop'?"

Caushun recently signed with Baby Phat Records, and his debut album, "Shock and Awe," will come out at the end of June before Gay Pride Day. His self-confidence is so strong that he doesn't believe his being gay will keep him from selling a million records and having a video played on MTV 20 times a week -- in other words, from becoming a star.

The hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, whose wife, Kimora Lee, is the owner and chief executive of Baby Phat, knows it will be hard to make Caushun a star, but he's hopeful.

"Rap music is one of the most homophobic musics we know," Mr. Simmons said. "But he's dope and he's unique because of his perspective on the world. I can't imagine that people aren't going to buy it. You think women and gay men won't buy it? It's a huge possibility."

Caushun says there were labels that wanted to turn him into a house-music artist or into the RuPaul of hip-hop, but he said no. He wants to be mainstream: "You got Jay-Z talking about girls, girls, girls. Nelly, take your clothes off. They put their sexuality out front. What's the big deal if I put mine up front and come out open?"

He learned to rhyme just hanging around his neighborhood. He says he would sit up in his parents house with his boys, smokingweed, and someone would start to rhyme, it was no big deal. "I rhyme about everything," he said. "I just rhyme from a gay perspective. And it's not like it's a flamboyant gay perspective. It's the next-door neighbor. We saying the same thing. I just might put a little gay terminology in there."

He plucked a few grapes from a bowl on a table, walked over to his iMac and put on a beat. The beat's just O.K. and the hook is kind of corny, but Caushun is witty, and he surely can flow.

What is recognized as the first hip-hop record by an openly gay person was "Hip-Hop Don't Stop" by Man Parish, recorded in 1986. According to industry figures and Web sites devoted to the subject, there are now at least 40 to 50 openly gay rappers worldwide. Most don't use homosexuality in the campy, cartoonish way Caushun does. The Deep Dickollective is a loose assemblage of black men based in San Francisco. Two regular members are Juba Kalamka, who rhymes as Pointfivefag, and Tim'm West, a widely respected rapper. Mr. West, who is H.I.V.-positive, is also an AIDS activist and a schoolteacher.

Their 2002 debut album, "BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo," deals with homosexuality less sensually than politically. In one rhyme Mr. West notes that the struggle going on inside his body is far more frightening than the street violence so often discussed in hip-hop. "I got T's and disease fightin' for possession of me / How am I gonna be scared of Glocks you pops, G?," he rhymes in "Rhyters Retreat."

The collective uses live instruments and plays with forms the way the experimental rappers the Roots do. Its rappers, or M.C.'s, rhyme with the intellectual revolutionary pose of Chuck D and the erudition of Cornel West. They feel that just being homosexual in hip-hop is a revolutionary act.

"We're just trying to shatter that whole notion that a real M.C. has to be straight," Tim'm West said. The collective's most recent album, "Them Niggas Done Went and Said," was released on April 19.

The collective and Caushun are part of an openly gay hip-hop world that is as varied as its straight counterpart. A rapper named Semaj from Brooklyn, who calls himself "a thug who happens to be homosexual," wants to appeal to the same people who love Jay-Z. Tori Fixx from Minneapolis calls himself a cross between the mellow rapper Q-Tip and Prince. Mr. Fixx released an album called "The Mochasutra." Miss Money, a rapper, singer and producer from Houston, has been called the gay Missy Elliot. MaaSen, from Sweden, rhymes in a high-energy style reminiscent of the Irish-American rap group House of Pain. Katey Red is a transvestite from New Orleans. There are others in England, Switzerland and France.

Many say the best openly gay M.C. is a short white lesbian named Cyryus (pronounced Serious). In 1998 she released an album called "The Lyricist," which recalls the moody, brooding, lyric-focused feel of the rap group Black Moon. On a song called "Y Us?" she rhymes about a lesbian friend who's pretending to be straight. "You doin ya own thing/ a portrait of success/ congratulations!/ You've been nominated best supporting actress!/ I certainly hope the enemy is impressed/ now I carry the struggle on my shoulders cuz I've inherited your stress."

But Cyryus hasn't been able to test her talent because just being gay in America is challenging enough.

"When I met her in 1996 she was like, 'I got a record, I'm pushing it,' " said Dutchboy, a rapper in the group Rainbow Flava and a central figure in gay hip-hop. "She was playing all these shows at all these pride events. Then she had some family problems and had to go live with her mom for a while. Then she was like, I'm joining the army. She lasted about a year before she got thrown out on some don't ask, don't tell. Last I knew she was bouncing around the South." No one I spoke to knew how to find her.

Many in gay hip-hop feel it's inevitable that a gay rapper will gain mainstream success. They point to the once unthinkable success of a white rapper like Eminem. "It'll be like D-Day," Dutchboy said. "A lot of people will go down trying and then someone will make it off the beach."

The record business isn't so sure. Executives from major hip-hop labels, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was little chance of an openly gay rapper succeeding in the ultra-homophobic world of hip-hop. "A manager plays a record for us," one executive said, "and it's incredible, then the manager says, 'Oh by the way, he's gay.' Everything stops. I really think we would probably tell him don't talk about it. Don't rock the boat."

Mr. Simmons says there is a chance, if a gay artist can find the right niche. "The hip-hop hardcore kid may think it's funny, may buy a single," Mr. Simmons said, "but he's not likely to buy an album because you're not speaking to a lifestyle that they're aspiring to. All these rappers are talking about a lifestyle that people relate to or aspire to. I don't think the average straight hip-hop consumer is going to buy it, but there's a lot of gay consumers buying rap records."

Of course, it would be tough for a gay rapper to get the discussion off of his sexuality and onto his rhymes. The cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson, who is a professor of African-American studies and religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Your flow would have to be so ridiculous that Biggie would be envious!"

Hip-hop has long ignored gay rappers and straight hip-hop stars who visit gay clubs, some of whom use homophobic language in their rhymes. "I haven't had sex with any famous rappers, but I know about some," Dutchboy said with a hint of mischief.

Coming out of the closet has its artistic advantages. Mr. Kalamka said that before he came out he was unable to freestyle because he was afraid of what he might say. Now he can. Hanifah Walidah, a San Francisco rapper, agreed that coming out gave her new strength. "I look at old videotapes of me performing when I was in the closet," Ms. Walidah said, "and I could see through my body language that my body was tight, that I was holding something in, I wasn't giving all that I had to give. Sometimes I look at these M.C.'s who I know are gay and they're off the hook and I'm like, damn, wonder what they'll be like when they come out? How dope will they be when they're truly free?"

Asked whether or not the hip-hop nation is ready for a gay M.C., Tim'm West said: "The question is irrelevant. The openly gay M.C. is here. Will you or will you not respond to it? If you don't, I'm still going to keep making rhymes. I'm not interested in whether or not America is ready for me. I'm here."

Touche'D talk about a girl I was once close to and how shes acting shady on me now "So When are you gonna come and see me HU? when youve filled you girlfriend quota? Travled all over the world but Minnesota? Dont matter if I say pop or soda... Dont matter if you say Hella or really cuz years from now Im still gonna be me. Only differance is you might not see me cuz when you cant have me sure wanna be with me... no wanna be seen with me? better look in the mirror before you turn Touche'D ... Touche' Lady , take a hit flip the script and become slim shady.. dont matter if your dating a B**ch or a ladie cuz when you wanna ask me out im gonna say maybe"

Sone of the topics I talk about on my upcoming CD White Lesbian Rapper will be Lesbian topics such as: Hurt by ex gfs, a song about Jeeps (popular gay automobile), lesbian trends such as Jocks and abercrombie and Fitch jeans, with girls in pony tails, being broke, kinky cop sex, complation of naming of old school song titles talking about all the songs that remind you of one person from back in the day.

You may email me at Crookedluvr21@aol.com for more info

this is a joke right?

Givin' cookies: Gay sex in the hip hop world
Are the conditions right for a hot-shot gay rapper to shoot to the top of the charts?
50 Cent: Not Homophobic/"Ain't Into Faggots"
music made by the gays? C/D?
Who put the homophobia in hip hop?

http://www.citypages.com/databank/27/1329/article14381.asp
http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2006/05/tori_fixx_fuck.asp

Thus, having the possibility to wear an Eminem t-shirt and so-to-say proclaim "Hey, I like Eminem so I cannot be gay", is very useful for 12-14-year-olds and Eminem knows that.

That being said, the 80s was a time with more tolerance at least towards gay symbols. I mean, half of the big UK pop acts were gay or bisexuals anyway.

I'm not sure whether gay people would spread all over the genres in the same numbers though. I would guess the number of gay males who are into house, dance or disco is probably more than 10 per cent, whereas the percentage who are into hip-hop or metal (another homophobic genre) is considerably less.

"We find a deeper clue to the terror associated with homosexual impulses by noting the class structure of the society. Broadly speaking, homosexuality is considered most abhorrent in those societies which decry social stratification; it is particularly an issue when an insurgent lower-status group is aggressively pressing claims against an older and more priviledged social order. In an established social group that is not under serious challenge, homosexual feelings are not usually strongly decried; they are often institutionalized and even, under some circumstances, regarded as noble."

You'll even notice in this thread that the places in America with a thriving homosexual hip-hop scene are coincidentally places of affluence. San Fran prides itself on being the "Gayest city in America" and coincidentally had (still has?) the highest income per capita in the entire country. I distinctly remember New York City being the ten richest city according to the last census. Just how many poor and undereducated homosexuals have you met in your life?

I would suspect that the emergence of homosexual rappers will directly correlate with hip-hop culture not being necessarily related to the lives of poor black Americans.

!!

Today in my African American lit seminar we discussed Mykki Blanco and Le1f. I love school.

!

It is worth mentioning that I only brought up the latter, and even then, only after one of my classmates brought up the former. When I saw my prof scribble down Le1f's name in his notebook, I told him to download the Fly Zone tape.

lol, my friend that teaches classes on gender in media studies gets into those kinda conversations all the time. i think she has a matrix lecture.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/interviews/id.2181/title.f-virtue-discusses-homosexuality-in-hip-hop-coming-out-in-single-anita-bryant-

Unfortunately that guy's a pretty bad rapper though.

Definitely important to mention Lord Jamar in the second sentence of that. Def important to validate the opinions of a bigot who hasn't made an important record in 20 years

-________-

http://labrujamorgan.tumblr.com/post/79881448946/some-reflections-on-gaybigaygay

Cakes played it down a bit -

I’m sorry the event took a turn for the worst for you boo but I did not end my set out of frustration but because of a time restraint. Also, no one during my set annoyed me with how they were acting to me it seemed all out of fun.

Again, I’m sorry the event didn’t pan out the way you wanted it to but I def had fun at my first Gaybi and I don’t think Mykki was fazed either.

They have been told their whole lives that everything is theirs. They’ve been told that whatever they do is fine and cute and great

don't think this is really accurate about LGBT people of any colour tbh (this is not to minimise how terrible white gays can be) (the way she described it sounded terrible but if cakes is telling a different story...?)

fans climbing on stage during a concert isn't really a matter of disrespect or entitlement is it?

if uninvited i'd tend to call it an asshole move regardless but if the performers were fine with it, or it was expected...

That was an

urgh, sorry: wasn't there and have limited perspective but cakes and mykki have distinctly punk sensibilities, i have a hard time believing this kind of behavior would've traumatized them. and having been to dozens of sets where the words "these goddamn white people" have easily come to mind, saying that the white fans were "spasmodically wriggling" to the set sorta plays out your hand; with the artist shrugging in the comments this reads more like an opportunity to grind an axe in bloggytown than highlight a great injustice

alright, I hadn't seen Cakes' response. moving along

gaybigaygay is a terrible show name btw

truuuu

passed my way today, dunno if i exactly care for it or not
http://vimeo.com/84941601

surprised that this hasn't been discussed yet (for the fact of its existence much more so than its quality)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4iBBfEHNaE