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chchchcheck

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whooooooooo

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"who is the gay rapper?"

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The oldest and stupidest question in the history of HipHop.

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Back in 1996 this magazine named One Nut Network

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published an alleged interview with the anonymous gay rapper,

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and ever since then the more gossipy members of our hip hop nation

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have been in an endless argument about

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"who is the gay rapper?"

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"Who is THE gay rapper?"

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Because as we all know,

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being a gay rapper is like being The Highlander,

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and there can only be one on earth at the same time.

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However and new book just came out named Hiding In HipHop

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by a long time MTV executive named Terrance Dean,

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writing about his life as a gay man in the HipHop world,

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and lo and behold, according to his book,

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there's a lot of gay people in HipHop

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just like every other part of the world,

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because being gay is normal and it happens everywhere.

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I haven't seen the book yet,

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and I'm worried it might just be another Karrine Steffans style

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saucy tell-all memoir,

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but I'm hoping it'll be something more than that

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because HipHop has a whooooole lot of baggage

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around the topic of homosexuality and manhood in general,

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so anything we can do to spark some serious thought and conversation on these issues,

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like that Byron Hurt documentary

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that made Busta Rhymes run for the border,

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the more we can do things like that to challenge ourselves the better.

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Because when we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man,

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but loving a man makes us less of a man,

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it's probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.