LGBT hip hop

The tradition & historical record

Gender and sexual diversity among hip-hop artists have existed since the genre's earliest days, yet it has historically and predominantly been perceived as the epitomized expression of Black straight male masculinity and culture, which are usually externalized as the degradation of women and homosexuality within the music and personified as a lifestyle outside the music. In his 2006 documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Byron Hurt explores the nuanced relationships between hip-hop, masculinity, misogyny, and homophobia. In the documentary Hurt travels around the country and interviews rap and hip-hop artists, academics, and fans about their perceptions on these issues in the culture. After conducting dozens of interviews, Hurt sees a continued pattern of homophobia, the objectification of women, and the domination of other men, all linked as the means through which one asserts their masculinity over another. Lauron J. Kehrer writes extensively on the prevalence and issues of misogyny/misogynoir and homophobia/lesbophobia faced by queer women hip-hop artists in Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance. The construction of this specific masculinity in hip-hop has made it difficult for artists who don't fit the stereotypical image of a hyper-masculine straight male to succeed. Some scholars have attempted to categorize different types of female hip-hop artists as a means of increasing their representation within the genre, such as Cheryl L. ¹

By the early 2010s, a new wave of openly LGBTQ hip-hop musicians began to emerge, spurred in part by the increased visibility and social acceptance of LGBTQ people, the coming out of mainstream hip-hop stars such as Azealia Banks and Frank Ocean, and the release of LGBTQ-positive songs by heterosexual artists such as Murs, Macklemore, and Ryan Lewis. Although inspired and empowered by the homo hop movement, this newer generation of artists garnered more mainstream media coverage and were able to make greater use of social media tools to build their audience, and thus did not need to rely on the old homo hop model of community building. Many of these artists were also strongly influenced by the LGBTQ African American ball culture, an influence not widely seen in the first wave of homo hop, and many began as performance art projects and incorporated the use of drag. Accordingly, many of the newer artists were identified in media coverage with the newer "queer hip-hop" label instead of "homo hop". In 2008, Jipsta released the single "Middle of the Dancefloor" which spent a total of 14 weeks (peaking at #6 for two consecutive weeks) on the Billboard Dance Club Play chart. This achievement was noteworthy for LGBTQ hip-hop as it marked the first time an openly gay White rapper earned a Top 10 single on the Billboard Club Play chart. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “LGBTQ representation in hip-hop”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

LGBT hip hop is attitudes towards homosexuality in hip hop culture, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²