When people think about hip hop, one of the first things that comes to mind is naked women running around in music videos or lyrics that refer to women as b*tches and h*es. Women are an essential part of hip hop as we know it. With women being both the object of affection and objectification in hip hop comes heterosexuality being the only way of life. This results in homophobia. There is no doubt that hip hop is a very homophobic genre of music. This genre was created and is currently dominated by African American men and above all, African American men are taught to be masculine. Therefore homosexuality is looked down upon in this community. Hip hop and homophobia have a long history. Many rappers have used homophobic slurs in their music but some artists have tried to transcend the trend of homophobia in the genre. For example the rapper Lil B has entitled his new album “I’m Gay.” Lil B’s attempt to get the hip hop culture to ease up on the homophobia backfired. The rapper received death threats and had other rappers attack him online. Although Lil B isn’t gay, his action caused an uproar showing that homophobia still exists in the hip hop culture. One of my friends summed up hip hop’s views on homosexuality in one sentence, “you can’t be gay and rap.”
The newest event in the dialogue between Hip Hop and sexuality is Frank Ocean coming out of the closet. Before the release of his first studio album, the singer took to tumblr to admit that his first love was a man. If you like Frank Ocean like I do, I can hear you saying this:
“But wait! Isn’t Frank apart of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All?”
Why yes he is.
“So that means he’s cool with Tyler, the Creator, right?”
I would suppose so.
“But isn’t Tyler homophobic?!”
Hmm let’s see.
For those of you who may not know that much about Frank Ocean he is apart of the LA based hip hop group, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and Tyler, the Creator is kind of like the head honcho. Tyler is known for his constant use of the word “faggot” and other homophobic slurs in his music.
“Blasting ‘You’re a jerk’ in some fucking yellow skinnies
looking like a fucking faggot,”
This lyric taking from the song “Session” is only one of the rappers many uses of the word faggot. But when Frank’s coming out post went public Tyler tweeted:
“My Big Brother Finally F*cking Did That… Proud Of That N*gga Cause I Know That Shit Is Difficult Or Whatever. Anyway. I’m A Toilet.”
Tyler congratulated Frank, but at the same time dismissed everything that Frank did. But Tyler says he’s not homophobic and he uses the slurs to mean stupid or dumb.
Despite the confusion with Franks hip hop affiliations, he is the first major hip hop artist that I know of to come out as being bisexual. There were definitely mixed feelings on his action. Some thought it was a publicity stunt to get more people interested in his album. Some were very proud and happy for him and the LGBTQI community. And some were disgusted. But I do think Frank opened the doors to help change the way people think. A common theme on my twitter news feed was, “Frank may not be straight, but he still makes some bomb music.” In his coming out letter Frank writes “4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together.” He goes on to write a beautiful letter explaining the ups and downs of this love, making you forgot that it’s “weird” that he’s talking about another man. Frank has a few songs on his album that use he or him instead of she or her, but to be honest, I didn’t even realize this until someone pointed it out to me. I was too focused on the amazing way he is able to tell his stories of love and hurt. I’m happy and excited that Frank Ocean is helping hip hop to become not so homophobic. Hopefully because of him and other artists who follow his lead, it won’t matter who you love and write love songs about, as long as it is good hip hop music.