By: Meghan Mahaffey
LGBTQ+ artists have always been a part of Hip-Hop, despite cultural and industry attempts to overshadow their work. Queer artists stayed in the closet if they wanted to make money. Da Brat, known for her song “Funkdafied,” which put her on the map in the ‘90s, stayed closeted in her early career. She told Variety, “I was always told you want to be [desireable] to men and women to sell records – you don’t want anybody to discriminate.” As times changed, she was able to embrace her sexuality more publically, recently welcoming her first child with her wife Jesseca Harris-Dupart.
The societal shift regarding the acceptability of LGBTQ+ people in the public eye meant queer themes could surface in music, and specifically in Hip-Hop. Artists such as Tyler, the Creator, Lil Nas X, and Cardi B have achieved the heights of their careers because of the acceptability of their sexualities. Queer Hip-Hop is not a new phenomenon. The genre has always been tightly knit with LGBTQ+ communities– it just wasn’t the narrative we heard in the mainstream. Shanté Paradigm Smalls, a professor of art and public policy at NYU, discusses the intersection of Black and queer communities in the ‘90s.
They say, “Disco culture at that time was all-inclusive … all races, lifestyles, dance-focused. There was a lot of flamboyancy, and that was part of gay culture.” They continue, “Black people have always been at the forefront of queer and trans culture.” Black queer communities are responsible for the developments in Hip-Hop, and all of these subcultures were evolving simultaneously.
The freedom that flowed throughout Hip-Hop and queer spaces began to get buttoned up with the broader agreement that disco and ballroom were not socially acceptable. They were regarded as feminine and queer at a time when homophobia ran rampant throughout the US. Because of this societal shift, Hip-Hop abandoned its connections to specifically disco. The genre became hyper-masculine and heteronormative in the mainstream, but the queer roots could never be fully erased. Because of these cultural foundations, the work of Black queer artists is able to amount to commercial success. Because of the founders that came before her, Doechii accepted a Grammy for Best Rap Album for a mixtape with explicitly queer themes weaving in and out of each song. The history of Hip-Hop is incomplete without the Black queer artists that so many stand on the shoulders of today.
