Dane101 contributor and hip hop artist el guante also has a personal blog,
He recently wrote an article exploring issues of homophobia as it relates to socially conscious hip hop artists. Dane101 has excerpted part of the post here and you can find it in its entirety at his blog.
I first heard New York rapper Saigon a few years ago—a few songs here and there from his various mixtapes, from hip hop websites and from friends’ mix CDs.
Armed with a razor-sharp wit, a real talent for multisyllable rhyme and the bombastic production of Just Blaze, Saigon was a welcome breath of fresh air. To top it all off, Sai was political! He was down with dead prez, he rapped about crooked politicians and he was one of an extremely few artists able to successfully blend street credibility with socially-conscious rhymes.
“Finally,” I thought. “A credible rapper who isn’t afraid to talk about real issues and actually has some personality. This guy could be the future.
He could be ‘the conscious 50 Cent.’ Saigon could really change the face of mainstream hip hop.”
But it was too good to be true, as these sorts of things always are.
Saigon, as it turns out, is virulently, publicly homophobic. For example, Sai’s response to Kanye West calling for a moratorium on homophobia in hip hop:
“S to the A I, may I say I never affiliate myself with a gay guy/ Sorry Kanye I, had homophobia ever since I was yay high.”
Doesn’t really get much more overt than that.
And here is his rhymed multiple choice question on “Contraband II:”
“Question number three is for the females/ y’all know how I feel about the details/ this is 100% true, I’ll bet with you/ why is three out of every four broads bisexual?/ A; ‘cause they tired of the problems that the men bring/ B; they just munchin’ on carpets ‘cause it’s the in-thing/ C; ‘cause America say it’s okay to be gay/ D; this just Sodom and Gomorrah on replay.”
I really had no reason to be surprised.
Throughout the years, rappers I had once looked up to as talented and socially conscious have repeatedly let me down when it comes to applying their revolutionary fervor to the LGBTQ community. While “mainstream” artists like Eminem, DMX, Busta Rhymes and many others have been publicly criticized for their homophobic lyrics, we’ve failed to shine that same light on many of our self-proclaimed revolutionary heroes, so-called “conscious” acts like Saigon, Immortal Technique, Brand Nubian, Capital D, El-P, Goodie Mob and many, many others.
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