Presumably keen to boost album sales by increasing his gay fan base (ah, are we cynical or what?), Kanye West has called for an end to homophobia in the hip hop community. Speaking to MTV, West said that hip hop was always about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people. I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it'." So that's them told.
West admitted he once held anti-gay views himself after school friends accused him of being a 'mama's boy'. He explains: "What happened was, it made me kind of homophobic, because I would go back and question myself." But everything changes when the rapper discovered on of his cousins was gay: "It was a turning point when I was like, 'Yo, this is my cousin. I love him and I've been discriminating against gays'."