Playing James Baldwin In The Club: Hip Hop & Homophobia

I just finished a re-read of The Fire Next Time and did not realize how much I had missed my first read as a 19 year old. It makes sense as my conception of Blackness was nascent, but I was lucky enough to have a professor to coach me through these theories that I had never encountered before.  From the first class I took with him, Professor Charles Nero assisted my coming into my own form of Blackness in a way that was accessible, but simultaneously challenging. He taught a film study class which forever changed my relationship to film and was the entry point to thinking critically about how my identity as a Black man was portrayed to audiences on the silver screen and beyond. It was Professor Nero who told me to read Baldwin’s text, as we worked together closely on an MLK Day project. Both persons becoming formative to my identity as a Black man- serving as matches which lit a fire under me to define for myself the meaning of this high melanin amount in this American context. Both of these men also happened to love men. Their conceptions of Blackness were intimately intertwined with their experience as gay men and both taught me through theory and experience. As my clay like personality was forming, my Blackness and love of hip hop were emerging as hands keeping it, being an identity of self,  all together. But often, my intersectional approach to Blackness, as informed by my teachers, would conflict with hip hop in major ways. Hip hop was homophobic, but as LGBTQIA identifying hip hop stars sit atop the charts there is some nuance as to whether that past tense is warranted.

This August, for one of my best friend’s birthday, I went to a few gay clubs in Atlanta and had a ball. We stayed out until 3:30 in the morning and he damn near killed me by trying to do it again the next day. While my geriatric sensibilities could not hang with him at the club two nights in a row and then do brunch on Sunday, I was happy to see him inhabit a mental space that I can only describe as home (after years of him going to straight clubs with me). The feeling in those clubs was one of freedom. This freedom was set to a soundtrack of the most popular rap songs in Atlanta, and usually thus the country. The Atlanta clubs have run hip hop for going on two decades now. There are countless stories of your favorite rapper making a song and taking it straight to an Atlanta club to see how the streets reacted. However, mixed in with the who’s who of hip hop played at these clubs was one artist that clearly had the Atlanta club scene in his hand, but to this day I have never heard on the radio- Saucy Santana.

The inability of Saucy to break into the mainstream while other LGBTQIA identifying artists like Tyler the Creator and Lil Nas X experience Billboard success may be rooted in some of that not so past tense homophobia of hip hop. To understand why Saucy may be treated differently we first have to understand the artists. Tyler has risen to soaring heights in hip hop accruing BET Awards, Grammy’s and out selling DJ Khaled to have the number 1 selling album in the country. This is all accomplished with his last two albums being vivid descriptions of unrequited love for both men and women. In the midst of dropping these albums Tyler has gotten co-signs and features from street artists like Westside Gunn and Maxo Kream, which often is the sub-genre of hip hop responsible for the most homophobic views. However, Tyler’s integration into mainstream and hardcore hip hop cannot simply be touted as a liberal/inclusive win for hip hop due to Tyler’s own complicated history with the LGBTQIA community, which to put it mildly is not the best. Tyler’s repeated use of homophobic slurs was a not small part of him getting banned from several countries early in his career. Combining a history of homophobia and a not so little ingredient of bi-erasure could create a perfect storm leading to Tyler’s acceptance in this genre. While he has grown from the teenager using those words into the 30 year old man making moves in fashion and film, hip hop and Tyler share a familiar uncomfortable past with the LGBTQIA community that is still lingering in the present.

A present that is being ruled by a new era of gen z stars like Lil Nas X. The hip-pop star has become incredibly successful in a short span of time, while coming-out to the world and continuing to represent the young man that Kid Fury and likely other LGBTQIA elders before him wish they could have seen on national television. While Lil Nas X’s sales and placements are undeniable, he is clearly a star, has this acceptance come from hip hop? It is hard to say when like the Candyman if you say Lil Nas X 5 times in the mirror- Lil Boosie pops up with homophobic tweets. The Wipe Me Down rapper has been on a tireless crusade against Montero for what seems like decades (and Lil Nas X has only been alive for 2). While the Boosie example may be extreme (which I am unsure whether it is extreme as I believe Boosie speaks for a lot more of the hip hop community than is willing to stand up with him) I wonder why there has been no Black male hip hop artists to work with the international star since coming out (or letting us in which is a sometimes preferred verbiage). Monetero’s self-titled debut was accompanied with features from Black women, a White man and not one cis-het Black man. The young rapper has stated that he does not feel accepted in hip hop which is hard to deny when Boosie is tweeting him every other day and since coming out and rising to the heights of musical stardom the overwhelming demographic majority of hip hop artists, cis-het Black men, have not opened a door nor a window into their spaces.

  Saucy on the other hand has neither become the international star nor found acceptance in hip hop in the way that Lil Nas X and Tyler are able to claim; however every Saucy song played in the Atlanta clubs I went to was rapped word for word from the dance floor to each section back to the bar and then down to the hookah girls. Saucy came on to the scene as little more than Young Miami’s friend, but made a pivot into music and has not looked back. While amassing millions of views online Saucy has not been able to turn that into mainstream hip hop success or internal validation from hip hop. I do not see Saucy discussed as an up and coming rapper by hip hop blogs or see features from the cis-het Black male stars that usually would flock to an up and coming rapper at the beginning of their career (I desperately want a 2 Chainz feature for Saucy). Instead Saucy has been relegated to a particular section of the hip hop internet and Atlanta club scene.

While the styles of music created by each of these artists are completely different and as such are difficult to compare there seems to be a connection between each artists acceptability and their gender expression. While gender and sexuality are two completely difference things, it seems that the further away from cis-gender expressing these artists get the harder it has been for them to be accepted in hip hop. Now, I cannot tell you how each of these men view their relationship to masculinity, femininity and the massive word outside of the binary, but Tyler’s painted nails may be a little more accepted in a genre coping with its past and present homophobia than Lil Nas X playfully twerking in a wig and even more than Saucy in a bodycon dress, pumps that I can neither name nor afford and a chanel bag (queue material girl). This simple and in many ways reductive argument is what I walked away from Atlanta pondering as I knew that the freedom felt in that space may never live on air waves. Which was confusing as Atlanta clubs were often the spark to getting radio play and mainstream success.

There is one huge logical jump I have made here, it is the assumption that the success that other rappers have found in the Atlanta club scene includes the Gay clubs in the city. Atlanta’s rise as an American Wakanda and the capitol of hip hop coincides with its rise as an LGBTQIA inclusive city. In my time I have seen Gay men associated more with Atlanta than with San Francisco which was at the forefront of gay rights not even a generation ago. This assumption that Gay clubs are included may be optimistic, but if it does not hold, it further elucidates the homophobia problem in hip hop. The sexuality of the person spinning the records or those listening to the records at a club, should have no effect on the success of the record, but rather success should be based on how the record makes people feel. If freedom can be felt in Saucy’s Up & Down by a straight married man in a gay club, than it is a good record no matter the setting or singer. While it may be ugly and more nuanced than in the past, hip hop needs to look at itself and ask what it wants to be to recognize and face its issues. As Baldwin once said “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. ”