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Artist News
Snoop on openly gay rappers (not likely, he reckons)
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 8 April 2013
Snoop Lion, if that’s what we’re still calling him, has told The Guardian he’s not convinced that Frank Ocean coming out last year, and the reassuring lack of controversy around it, means that the rap world at large has overcome its past homophobic tendencies. Ocean, you see, although part of the Odd Future hip hop collective, is a singer not a rapper.
Asked about Ocean admitting that his first love had been another man in a Tumblr post last July, Snoop told The Guardian: “Frank Ocean ain’t no rapper. He’s a singer. It’s acceptable in the singing world, but in the rap world I don’t know if it will ever be acceptable because rap is so masculine. It’s like a football team. You can’t be in a locker room full of motherfucking tough-ass dudes, then all of a sudden say, ‘Hey, man, I like you’. You know, that’s going to be tough”.
Questioned about his own views on the matter, the rapper assured the paper he wasn’t homophobic, before providing a very brief history of gay rights according to Snoop. He continued: “I don’t have a problem with gay people. I got some gay homies. Yeah, for real. People who were gay used to get beat up. It was cool to beat up on gay people back then. But in the 90s and 2000s, gay is a way of life. Just regular people with jobs. They went through the same things we went through as black. Now they are accepted, not classified”.
Except, it would seem, in the rap community.