The recent emergence of queer hip-hop âor so it is calledâhas seemingly brought disturbance to the hip-hop world dominated by straight artists. Rappers like Mykki Blanco and Le1f have made their names known to global audiences and demonstrated in their performance a different kind of hip-hop , one that is definitely boundary-wrecking if not ground-breaking. Their lyrics are daring and eccentric to say the least, their public images and stage presentations are outlandish and aesthetically incoherent such that they can easily distort and disorient that which is considered normal and acceptable for a rapper and the position he/she typically speaks from. But this book is not about queer rappers who have been promoted by the music industry; instead, it looks at several grassroots and more community-oriented black gay rappers who have either rejected commercialisation or been left out of the conventional hip-hop scene because of their masculinity.
The ostensible promotion of queer hip-hop , a category Mykki Blanco âbegrudginglyâ accepted (Johansson 2013; Lynskey 2016), is often mistaken as a sign that the hip-hop community has grown âsoftâ on what hip-hop is about and whom it is for. Since women (e.g. Lilâ Kim) and white people (e.g. Eminem ) have successfully invaded the traditionally black male centred hip-hop community, representations of hip-hop culture have become more and more diverse, except for the rap styleâwhich has remained hard-headed, in-your-face, and never lacked the spirit of protest. But queer hip-hop cannot be said for a second as part of this diversification, for it is a niche genre external to, though not mutually excluded from, the traditional hip-hop field. The two do not share the same audience the way male and female rappers do (or black and white rappers do), neither do they compete on the same platform. In other words, queer hip-hop is still predominantly indie music and has not truly reshuffled the rules of the hip-hop game.
Delving into its history, hip-hop culture has not been a place where gay rappers are welcomed. Starting from Sugarhill Gangâs âRapperâs Delightâ (1979),1 the first hip-hop song to ever reach Billboard Top 40, which features a line âI said heâs a fairy I do suppose / Flyinâ through the air in pantyhoseâ, hip-hop has had a long history of homophobic lyricism. âThe Messageâ (1982),2 a hit single by Grandmaster Flash , had verses mocking the fag : âstickup kid sent up for an eight-year bidâ; once in prison, âyour manhood is took and youâre a maytag / spendinâ the next five years as a undercover fag â. In more blatant a manner, The Beastie Boys had planned to name their debut album (1986) Donât Be a Faggot3 and only apologised in 1999 through Time Out New York for the ignorance they initially wanted to voice by that album. In 1988, N.W.A. brought hip-hop to an unprecedented hype in which songs like âGangsta Gangstaâ and âNobody Moveâ4 glorified violence against lesbians and transgender people (e.g. âbut she keep cryinâ / I got a boyfriendâ / bitch, stop lyinâ / dumb-ass hooker ainât nothinâ but a dykeâ; âput the gat to his legs, all the way up his skirt / because this is one faggot that I had to hurtâ). The above are barely a few drops in the bucket compared to the homophobic tongue inherent in gangsta rap : not only do gay slurs like faggot, punk, sissy frequent rap lyrics, pet phrases like âno homoâ have also become genuine tokens of hip-hop culture.
Whereas homosexuality and hip-hop can relate to one another for sharing a history of political containment and struggle, they cannot be said to have been destined for mutual encounter. Even though prominent rappers such as Jay-Z and Russell Simons have voiced their support for gay rights, we barely see any out rappers, let alone in the fiercely competitive circle of hip-hop stardom. Unlike music genres (e.g. rock & roll, classic, jazz, R&B) where gay musicians have come out (e.g. Elton John, Ricky Martin, Frank Ocean ) with their careers unscathed; hip-hop culture as a whole is still dominated by straight artists, with many claiming the non-existence of gay rappers. Though not denying the presence of gay people in the hip-hop industry, such claims are less about sexuality than about gender ; for the underlying assumption here is that hip-hop is too masculine an art form for any gay man (or lesbian) to master and appreciate. In an interview with New Music Express, Chuck D. told that Frank Oceanâs coming out would not have any significant impact on the hip-hop community because Ocean , though formerly involved in the rap crew Odd Future , came out as an R&B singer. Chuck states:
I commend Frank Ocean for coming out and saying it, but itâs not a first because thereâs plenty of black male gay singers. Even when they donât admit it, you kind of know. If you heard somebody like⊠I donât want to say a name, because people will talkâŠbut like somebody in the Wu-Tang Clan or something, if they came out then that would be ground-breaking. That would be totally challenging. (Levine 2012)
Though met with criticism, Chuckâs comment was far from a backlash against Ocean âs courageous coming out for he succinctly summarised the two rudimentary qualities of hip-hop music: (1) that it is the most masculine of all music genres (Perry 2004: 158); (2) that the rapper ought to be distinguished from the singer. Hence the avowed non-existence of gay rappers points to questions regarding the cultural origin of hip-hop music, its social and political employment, and how homosexuality is perceived in the music world prior to the emergence of hip-hop culture.
While some (e.g. Perry 2004: 119) have described hip-hop âs masculinist origin as a contemporary response to the historical emasculation of slavery and the relegation that the black race was the âladyâ among all races (Ferguson 2004: 57â8), recognising black menâs gendered oppression in history and its reactive manifestation in hip-hop music does not render sexist/homophobic practice on the part of rappers excusable or out of sync with the rap scene. Instead, as this book aims to converse, one should question the extent to which rappers have, either personally or in performance, adopted the role of the oppressor as many have tried to justify their anti-gay sentiments through the lens of Afrocentrism and Black Nationalism . Also, due to the influence of the Black Arts Movement, which conceived blackness as solely a framework of anti-white opposition, self-dubbed nationalist rappers have opted to define their work against Western or âwhiteâ music that comes from the European high culture and appears to be effeminate and bourgeois oriented (Ross 2000: 297).
As somewhat implied in Chuckâs comment, granted that âsingingâ and âmusicalâ were codes for the male homosexual in the Anglo-Saxon queer vernacular, such words professed a homoerotic undertone distinct from their literal meanings (Hubbs 2004: 66). This has led some to accusing men skilled in singing (often R&B singers) of being unmanly, and perhaps gay (McClary 1991: 17). One example came from âYa Strugglinâ5 where KRS-One uttered: âwhere oh where, are all the real men? / the feminine look seems to be the trend / you got eyeliner on, chillin and maxinâ / see youâre a man with a spine extraction / so what Iâm askinâ is plain to see / are there any straight singers in R&Bâ? The verses bewail the feminisation of men in the contemporary worldâa trend supposedly manifested by the performance of latent gay R&B singers. In spite of associating singing with gayness and even emasculation (as âspine extractionâ infers), KRS-One also praised hip-hop as the last musical resort for real men, for it possessed all the non-effeminate qualities compared to Western music as though rap was a way, says Brand Nubian âs Lord Jamar, âto sing without singing, and, to write poetry without being a poetâ (in Cheney 2005: 64).
Here singing is deemed a feminine act and the male singer viewed as having a proclivity for cross-gender behaviour. These assumptions are nevertheless contingent on the way modern homosexuality was defined prior to the LGBT movement, i.e. a clinical term deeply associated with symptoms of âgender disorderâ (Foucault...