No More Gays In Pop
- Thread starter mistersloane
- Start date
Littlefoot
Well-known member
There are probably tonnes, but don't feel the need to mention it..
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Now I KNOW I'm on the Internet.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
SecondLine
Well-known member
yeah, i wouldn't claim to be anything other than a vastly under-informed amateur theorist on this issue but maybe what you're talking about is the total un-tethering of 'camp' from 'gay'?
plenty of camp as fuck pop music around (tbh, most of it lately, even when it tries to be macho) but it's no longer consistently associated with gay community/gay individuals like it was in the 80s.
speaking of which, great article in one of those loops journals applying susan sontag's notes on camp to uber-macho hip-hop. might have to dig that out.
SecondLine
Well-known member
e.g. some idle googling suggests that basement jaxx aren't gay.....
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Yes please SL, if you got a link that'd be great. That's kinda what I was asking in a roundabout way. I know that the idea was to 'gay-ify' mainstream culture, and it just seems like it happened, and what I'd like to know is where the gays have gone.
I mean, I know where the queer punks have gone, they're off listening to armageddoncore and Berlin-ing, but I kinda wonder what the mainstream lot are up to. It must be weird to be assimilated that entirely, even if that was the idea in the first place. It does make me think of the Borg.
SecondLine
Well-known member
here you go, not all entirely relevant but a good read all the same -
http://www3.waterstones.com/wat/images/special/promo/samdaviesarticle.pdf
although maybe this bit answers your original question:
"There’s no need to whisper rumours on internet forums, start YouTube beefs, or
pre-empt innuendo because, in terms of much of their mental furniture...everyone
in hip hop is gay – at least a little bit."
http://www3.waterstones.com/wat/images/special/promo/samdaviesarticle.pdf
although maybe this bit answers your original question:
"There’s no need to whisper rumours on internet forums, start YouTube beefs, or
pre-empt innuendo because, in terms of much of their mental furniture...everyone
in hip hop is gay – at least a little bit."
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Which is funny, because despite all their homophobia, everyone in hip-hop/R&B is so broken-wristed it's hilarious.
Vaguely remember Chris Brown saying he had songs on his album for the gay community, and his audience who stood by him after Rhi-Rhi-Gate were fairly appalled. Amusing-ish.
Vaguely remember Chris Brown saying he had songs on his album for the gay community, and his audience who stood by him after Rhi-Rhi-Gate were fairly appalled. Amusing-ish.
Not sure i agree, they may have some of the feminine traits homophobes like to call gay; but the music pretty much only consist of tunes celebrating heterosexuality. Rappers on the other hand have lots of tunes calling women bitches and about their love of men.
But i'm thinking the lack of gays in pop might be a result of a cultural acceptance, making homosexuality less provocative, and thus less interesting. Theres no FGTH any more, instead we have Mika and Scissors Scisters, both 'flaming' of course, but also quite boring in their celebration of a culture that now seems a gay cliché.
SecondLine
Well-known member
fair point. If you were taking a scrooge-like, Reynoldsian stance you could say that that's a problem afflicting a lot of pop from the last decade...looking for boundaries to transgress but failing to find any, making everything end up kind of tepid.
The recent exception to that I can think of is odd future, where paradoxically 'breaking the last taboo' seems to involve ramping up the homophobia even further.
Incidentally the usual justification for tyler's epic gaybashing - that it's 'a character', or an 'ironic critique of homophobia in hip-hop' etc. - chimes well with the above article about hip-hop & camp..
"Camp sees everything in quotation marks"
It may not seem like it but I sit on the fence when it comes to OF, just playing devil's advocate.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Thanks. I like this bit :
"So hip hop Camp is like a mutant Camp, Camp gone wrong – a new kind of Camp which bears the same relationship to the original as the Y chromosome does to the X: a malformed variant of the original."
View attachment 61
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Invoking the Dre pic makes it all better. "I Need A Doctor" was subliminally one of the most homo-erotic records in years. Two guys endlessly pontificating about how much they love each other, Dre reciting Eminem's lyrics of telling foes to kiss his 'indecisive ass crack'.
@JWoulf; I don't know if that's right though. The message is one thing but if you look at the poses most of these artists make, it's a general vibe of 'the less masculine you are, the more successful you shall be'. Hence a young non-person like Big Sean who appears more obsessed with wearing clothes than any girl he'll meet is on a higher pedestal than say, Pusha-T and Cyhi.
Also, that's forgetting the whole stretch of the Atlanta Futuristic movement. The message was hetero, but a bunch of teen black kids in tight-fitting clothing singing in cartoonish high-pitched voices is obviously NOT the most masculine of rap.
<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bhWP-Q2O_qw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1WFB_LXLib8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/laKZgVdbj2U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I mean, a lot of this movement as petered out, and the biggest stars in this whole style have drained a lot of the fey-qualities out (Travis Porter & Future), but it was a hilarious event.
@JWoulf; I don't know if that's right though. The message is one thing but if you look at the poses most of these artists make, it's a general vibe of 'the less masculine you are, the more successful you shall be'. Hence a young non-person like Big Sean who appears more obsessed with wearing clothes than any girl he'll meet is on a higher pedestal than say, Pusha-T and Cyhi.
Also, that's forgetting the whole stretch of the Atlanta Futuristic movement. The message was hetero, but a bunch of teen black kids in tight-fitting clothing singing in cartoonish high-pitched voices is obviously NOT the most masculine of rap.
<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bhWP-Q2O_qw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1WFB_LXLib8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/laKZgVdbj2U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I mean, a lot of this movement as petered out, and the biggest stars in this whole style have drained a lot of the fey-qualities out (Travis Porter & Future), but it was a hilarious event.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think even before you consider the lyrical content, it's clear that one of the easiest ways (as a man) to look as camp as tits is to go out of your way to look as macho as possible. I mean come on, all those gleaming pecs and biceps, baggy pants that show off your arse and a shitload of flashy jewellery...
Last edited:
