from my new favorite website

[raybear]

RAP IS GAY ? ? ?

The question 'Who Is The Gay Rapper?' became something of a pathological
obsession within the hip-hop community of the mid-Nineties, after
an interviewer with an anonymous but supposedly well-known rapper
who talked about his closeted homosexuality appeared in a leading
magazine. Amid all the rabid speculation and name-calling, what most
people seemed unable to even entertain was the idea that there could
possibly be more than one. This is hardly a surprise considering that hip-hop is dominated by an overlap of two communities (entertainment
and black American) who have traditionally maintained their official
immunity from the perceived taint of homosexuality, as if worldwide
statistics don't apply in their case. Whereas in fact, there's no
reason why the proportion of gay hip-hop artists should be any
smaller than the proportion of, say, gay dentists. If you believe one set
of statistics, for example, at least one member of the Wu-Tang Clan
is likely to be gay.

But this is by the by: there's little to be gained from speculating
about the sexuality of individuals. Instead, it may be more rewarding
to consider those moments at which hip-hop, which is continually reaching
out to recuperate and adapt all other cultures, crosses the line and
starts to suggest something other than the kneejerk homophobia with
which it is usually associated. Take this lyric, from Nas' 'Half-Time':

"I switch styles like a faggot,
But not bisexual, I'm an intellectual…"

Ignoring for a moment the negative overtones of the language used
(and we would do well to ignore them when dealing with a discourse
which has always taken pejorative words and turned them into badges
of pride), we are presented with an interesting question. One of the
unspoken golden rules of hip-hop lyricism is that you only say you are 'like' something if it has qualities which you wish to attain
- so, notwithstanding his rather awkward qualifier in the next line,
in what way does Nas wish to be like a "faggot"?

The answer lies perhaps in hip-hop's perpetual obsession with the
Other. Hip-hop has always had and will always will have an irresistible
pull towards subcultures, and the unknown of all kinds: you prove
your skill as a DJ by digging in the crates for the most obscure beats,
and your skill as an MC with coming up with the most unexpected, crazy references in your rhymes. The terms 'sick', 'ridiculous', 'mad' and
'off the hook' are all compliments when applied to hip-hop music:
juxtapose this with the fact that the standard reaction to homosexuality
in hip-hop culture is incredulous revulsion ("how can they do those
things?"), and what Nas is doing is becomes clearer. He's reaching
for that next comparison, that next mad surprise he can pull out of
the hat, he's trying to say that he switches styles like something
completely out there – and then what he gets is too alien for him,
and he has to quickly pull back.

There's a strange similarity between hip-hop culture's attitude to
homosexuality and the attitude with which hip-hop itself was once
regarded. For a long time, rap was read by the mainstream media as
being somehow essentially in opposition to an identifiable musical
and cultural norm – it was a non-music, an anti-matter aberration
that was simultaneously terrifying and exerted a fascinating pull.
Of course this dichotomy relied on numerous fallacies, one of which
was the belief that hip-hop is essentially black music, whilst rock
and roll is essentially white: an idea that on one side at least is obviously laughable, yet which bizarrely persists to this day amongst
some. But hip-hop didn't start out as the music and culture of black
America men, but rather as the music and culture of working-class,
urban New York in the 1970s. It existed side-by-side with the other
subcultures of that time (disco, punk etc), and fed off them even
when it was defining itself in opposition. It doesn't take a theorist
to see similarities between Grandmaster Flash's Furious Five and the
Village People, and not just in terms of dress sense.

At its most expansive and inclusive, hip-hop, like the Zapatista movement,
extends to include anyone who is dispossessed. While much of mainstream
commercial rap is still about the black American man, the unquestionably
straight black American man, in recent times hip-hop has widened its
horizons once more to include white trailer trash (Eminem), psychedelic
cross-dressing visionaries from Atlanta (Outkast), and the pint-sized
bastard lovechild of Madonna and Lydia Lunch (Lil' Kim).

Outkast are a fascinating example, right here and now, of where hip-hop
is, where it's come from and where it might be going. Sure, one half
of the group, Big Boi, may have a strip club installed in his basement,
but increasingly the group's vision and public profile seems dominated
by a Pushkin-reading Ecstasy-addled prophet with a fondness for performing
in semi-drag. Make no mistake, however much he likes to identify it
firmly in the context of George Clinton and the flamboyant 'pimp'
look, Andre 3000 likes to wear a dress now and again. Or a cape. Or
a pair of bright green trousers that come halfway up his slim but
toned bare chest, topped off with a curly bright blond wig, a huge
pair of sunglasses and a shit-eating grin. Performing the band's hit
'Ms. Jackson' on Top of the Pops in this get-up, Dre looked no less
a pansexual androgynous Bacchanalian god beamed down from outer space
than David Bowie at his peak. So what if he insists he's heterosexual
in practice? If he is –well, so's Eddie Izzard. And if he isn't, there's
also a precedent there – Morrisey, anyone?

But it's not just the relatively outré Outkast blurring the gender
lines in rap: some of the artists at the heart of the ghetto-fabulous
mainstream are taking things even further. The extent to which hip-hop's
visual aesthetic has become camper than Cabaret is obvious (and that's
without even mentioning 'Puffy' and his fur coat and diamonds get-up).
But when this is coupled with the torrent of violent genderfuck fantasies unleashed by Lil' Kim on the astonishing 'Suck My Dick' (which starts
with the self-declared 'Queen Bee' being introduced by a drag queen),
it's something of a revelation:

"N***as love a hard bitch
One that get up in a n***a's ass quicker than an enema
Make a cat bleed then sprinkle it with vinegar
…
Imagine if I was dude and hittin' cats from the back
With no strings attached
Yeah n***a, picture that!"

What's particularly revealing is Kim's suggestion that the way she
takes on aggressive masculine attributes is precisely what makes her
so attractive to both her male and female admirers. In a culture that
celebrates a brand of masculinity so macho it frequently strays into
the realm of high camp, it's implied that what the swaggering 'thug'
wants most, his deepest, darkest fantasy, is to be flipped, for Kim
to take control and humiliate and degrade him. Another Lil' Kim track,
'Dreams', expressed her desire to make r&b singer Tony Rich her
"bitch". His alleged reply? "I'll be your bitch any time."

This all seems strikingly appropriate when one considers that Kim's
former love Notorious B.I.G. recorded 'Me and My Bitch'. Aside from
containing the rather eye-opening lyric "You look so good, I'd suck
on your daddy's dick", seems to confirm this desire for a woman who
fulfils the hip-hop ideal of male behaviour even more than he does:
one who'll "invite me, politely, to fight, G" if she suspects him
of cheating.

It's hardly surprising within the context of the culture that Biggie's
ideal soul-mate should be such a strikingly masculine figure. It's
only by having these qualities that she can be his "best friend" as
well as lover. Hip-hop masculinity is all about the celebration of
homosocial relationships, even at the expense of heterosexual ones:
a sentiment neatly summed-up by the liner notes to Xzibit's Restless
album, where he declares "I love my niggaz and not my bitches!" Any
potential dangerous overspill into homoerotic territory is resolutely
ignored, but it happens all the same. And it happens most notably not
when affection is being expressed, but in the realm of conflict.
Telling others rappers to suck your dick, or claiming they are already
doing so, or that they are "riding" your dick – all this is common
for the modern MC. In the context of this kind of highly-charged verbal
battling, the superior rapper succeeds by establishing himself in
a dominant position expressed in explicitly sexual terms: his opponent
becomes his catamite, his bitch. The language in which this is framed
is one that has its roots at least partly in an experience all too
commonly cited by rappers: that of prison. While experiences of homosexual
sex in prison are rarely cited (one rare example is Ol' Dirty Bastard's
hilarious but still rather transgressive claim on 'Got Your Money'
that Eddie Murphy taught him to suck his own dick in prison, thus
avoiding the need to indulge), it's undeniable existence still lurks
at the back of the collective hip-hop unconsciousness.

All this is just one aspect of a continuing contradiction between
the stability of the fixed, solid identity that many in hip-hop would
like to present (that of the young black male whose gender, race and
sexuality are untainted, inflexible attributes), and the true nature
of hip-hop culture. Hip-hop does not have a fixed identity: it's inherently
fluid, reaching out to embrace and make its own other musical genres,
other cultures, other races, and unconsciously, instinctively, other
sexualities. For now, a noticeably neurotic brand of knee-jerk homophobia
struggles to shore up that final boundary. But the boundaries between
hip-hop and other cultures are not solid, and nowhere is this clearer
than in the inability of hip-hop lyricists to stay within the culture's
self-proscribed boundaries where sexuality is concerned. The queering
of hip-hop has been going on since it's inception, and the signs are
becoming easier to read every day. The Gay Rapper? It's just a matter
of time.

Joe Macare

Comments

ready mr music

[torreycanyon.livejournal.com]

Ray, you're just the fellow to ask.

After briefly becoming enthused by hiphop while in Chile, I've let my interest lapse and returned to a state of complete ignorance. I think it's time to branch out again, so, do you have any recommendations?

Re: ready mr music

[raybear.livejournal.com]

Ah....where to start?

Any album by these folks will be great:
OutKast
De La Soul
The Roots
Tribe Called Quest
Mos Def
Ghostface Killah
2pac

Great beats, pretty good lyrics:
Jurassic 5
Dilated Peoples
Quasimoto

Something more thuggish/rough/raw?
Jay-Z
DMX
Shyne
Wu-Tang Clan
Notorious B.I.G.

Straight up weird but mindblowing?
Kool Keith
RZA

obviously, I'm a bit American focused. But I've been trying to educate myself on the rest of the world.

Re: ready mr music

[torreycanyon.livejournal.com]

Thanks -

I shall march into the hiphop section with newfound confidence (and cheatnotes hidden in a sweaty palm).