Harlem native A$AP Rocky recently sounded off on "the gay thing" in hip hop during an interview with Alexander Wang for Interview Magazine. The "Goldie" rapper says he wants to use his platform as an artist to let people know how he feels about the hot button topic.
“So now that I’m here and I’ve got a microphone in my hand and about 6,000 people watching me, I need to tell them how I feel," he said. "For instance, one big issue in hip hop is the gay thing. It’s 2013, and it’s a shame that, to this day, that topic still gets people all excited. It’s crazy. And it makes me upset that this topic even matters when it comes to hip hop, because it makes it seem like everybody in hip hop is small-minded or stupid -- and that’s not the case."
Rocky said that he treats everybody equal and he wants his listeners and followers to do the same. "We’ve got people like Jay-Z. We’ve got people like Kanye. We’ve got people like me. We’re all prime examples of people who don’t think like that. I treat everybody equal, and so I want to be sure that my listeners and my followers do the same if they’re gonna represent me. And if I’m gonna represent them, then I also want to do it in a good way.”
In February, hip-hop mogul and philanthropist Russell Simmons stated that rappers are less anti-gay than before. Singer Frank Ocean came out in July 2012 as part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and other artists, like Azealia Banks, who identifies as bisexual, are also helping to combat homophobia in the hip-hop community.
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