He spent the two months that followed the incident away from the spotlight. He was victimized by anti-gay bias via a video shared without his consent. While there are some successful queer male rappers out today - Tyler, The Creator and Lil Nas X among them - they came out on their own terms. Rashad’s cathartic performance at Coachella, one of the biggest music festivals in the world, illustrates how far hip-hop has come and how much further the genre has to go. Related Story Best albums of 2021: Isaiah Rashad’s ‘The House Is Burning’ Read now In those days, a rapper being outed as gay would be a career death sentence. If you grew up as a rap fan in the ’90s and 2000s, you heard the rumors all over barbershops and even hip-hop publications about the so-called Gay Rapper - a boogeyman who lived in the culture in secret, purporting to be straight, but behind closed doors would prowl for straight rappers and executives on their way to the top of the industry. Anti-gay slurs have been prevalent in its lyrics for decades and a rapper’s greatness is often only as stout as his masculinity. Hip-hop has had a complicated and often oppressive history with queerness. In February, a video circulated on the internet that allegedly depicted the Top Dawg Entertainment rapper engaged in sexual acts with another man. But this year, Rashad experienced a public devastation that threatened to end his career. Rashad’s set should have been the culmination of his ascent to superstardom after his 2021 masterpiece, The House Is Burning, solidified him as a consistently great artist. “Y’all kept me alive these last couple months,” Isaiah Rashad told the crowd during his powerful performance during the first weekend of this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
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