This is not a spoof YouTube video about a gay rapping on lack of rights on homosexuals. The song "Dilemma" is actually laid out by Captain Magik, a 28-year-old Cleveland native who used to rap as an opening act for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Insane Clown Posse. It was only about 2 1/2 years ago when he came out of the closet, but it wasn't so easy. At first he thought that revealing his sexual preference to the public would hurt his rap career, until he discovered that he was not alone.
Captain Magik found a thriving community of gay hip-hop artists, or homo-hop. In an interview with Los Angeles Times, he said that the experience was "liberating" and that he could "finally rap about things that are truly relevant" for him.
However, this subgenre (if you will) faces heavy scrutiny especially from within the hip-hop community. Hip-hop music has been branded a bigoted lot, where anti-gay diatribes would as normal as "la la la" while calls for gay tolerance would elicit scorn and jeers from your fellow artists. Just ask Kanye West when he stopped his concert in Madison Square Garden to tell his audience to stop being homophobic.
But if you question whether gay hip-hop is just "a trend," gay rappers say otherwise. They believe that it will eventually crossover to mainstream media.
With the sound of it, there's some potential.
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