Friday, May 11, 2007

Straight dope: Gay rapper wasn't gay

Do you remember MC Jason Caushun? He was promoted as the first mainstream, out, gay rapper who picked up an award from GLAAD? It turns out he was the creation of Ivan Matias, who's now calling time on a joke that isn't really all that funny.

Matias explains the genesis and six year, six show history of Caushun, and suggests that there was some sort of social conscience at the heart of the project:

I don't think he was mocking Hip-Hop. He was just a fraud with it. I think a part of this project was good because it showed that Hip-Hop is not as homophobic as it projects. Out of everyone else who could have popularized something as trivial as the color pink, it took a masculine culture like Hip-Hop to popularize that on men. This showed a good side of Hip-Hop that's its open and diverse.

Hmm. So what might look to the casual observer as a minstrel show of sexuality managed to sell some pink shirts. Well, that was certainly worth it. Because, of course, pink is a notoriously gay colour.


1 comment:

Mikey said...

say what you like about Hip Hop, it's made unfashionably old-fashioned qualitieslike racism & misogyny very cool among the younger set.

Post a Comment

As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.