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At one point, the group praises the diversity of the Atlanta rap scene, and the interviewer brings up Makonnen coming out, news the Migos had not been privy to beforehand. Rolling Stone recently ran a lengthy profile on the Migos, Atlanta rap peers of Makonnen’s and guests on his triumphant “Whip It (Remix),” following the trio through a hectic January studio day. The overwhelming fan response to Makonnen’s revelation has struck the same balance of acceptance and brutish prejudgment. “A lot of times, we hear a dude going to cosmetology school, we think … he’s gay,” Hot 97 morning-show host Ebro Darden ineloquently remarked in an early interview. It upsets rap’s streetwise hypermasculinity to have a cherubic, eccentric drug dealer turned cosmetologist turned rapper crooning and rhyming his way through songs about drugs and women. It’s a request most rappers don’t field in a lifetime, this urge to have him qualify his sexual identity beyond what he presents to listeners on record, and a curiosity borne out of a set of standards for manhood that are unique and, I maintain, injurious to rap.
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Atlanta rapper iLoveMakonnen came out as gay late last month in a series of tweets that fought back years of speculation about his sexual orientation in the press and elsewhere. I got by on trash talk and fistfights, as one did in those cagey Dinkins and Giuliani years, and the notion that soldiering through the end of high school with my own tribe of weirdos would get me to a point where it didn’t matter what the masculine norms were, or at least keep toxic ideas about manhood out of my line of vision.Įvery few months I’m reminded that my old dream of normalcy, or at least persecution-free eccentricity, is a lie. The urge to be more like the other boys would drive me through a string of feigned interests - I still keep tabs on the exploits of players for sports teams I don’t care about in the slightest - that never quite seemed to fit. My first sense of being “different” arrived at age 6, when I showed up to the first year of grade school months younger than everyone else, quiet and bookish, and picked up slang and mispronunciations I had no practical use for, to keep from coming off as a smart-ass. I thought all the other kids knew every breath and beat of Lisa Stansfield’s “Been Around the World.” They … did not. I thought everyone obsessed over Prince’s, Janet Jackson’s, and Bobby Brown’s outfits and dance moves. I was a weird kid growing up - or so I was told. Photo: Prince Williams/Getty Images for PUMA