In the past few weeks a number of rappers, including Boosie Badazz and DaBaby have made very public homophobic remarks about gay people in general, and Lil Nas X in particular.

“I’ve learned that what makes someone iconic is when they’re able to be 100 percent themselves,” says our September music director, @LilNasX. https://t.co/1UkdejYXwx

— Harper’s Bazaar (@harpersbazaarus) August 25, 2021

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Charles Blow wrote: Over the past few weeks, several rappers have made insensitive — or full-on homophobic — statements about gay people. DaBaby, a 29-year-old artist from Cleveland, vomited an H.I.V.-stigma-filled rant laced with harmful misinformation about the virus. The rapper T.I. defended DaBaby, saying that gay people had gone from being bullied to doing the bullying, simply because they had demanded accountability from DaBaby, urging him to apologize and pushing music festivals to drop him from their lineups. About a week after DaBaby’s rant, Boosie Badazz, a hip-hop artist who came up in the 1990s, went after Lil Nas X, one of the rare rappers who are openly, unapologetically, explosions-of-glitter gay, threatening to assault him.

the shit y’all say about me would drive me crazy if i didn’t already love myself

— MONTERO ???? (@LilNasX) August 23, 2021

I am always reminded of what James Baldwin told The Village Voice in a 1984 interview: Macho men are “far more complex than they want to realize.” As Baldwin put it: “They have needs which, for them, are literally inexpressible. They don’t dare look into the mirror. And that is why they need faggots. They’ve created faggots in order to act out a sexual fantasy on the body of another man and not take any responsibility for it.”

Gay Black people become agents against Black power and Black liberation, a weight on the race.

That is precisely the defense Boosie Badazz used when appearing on The Breakfast Club radio show, at one point seemingly expressing a fear that if rappers didn’t speak out against certain expressions of gayness, an entire generation of children could be indoctrinated.

“I have two things to say to Black male homophobes. One: Stop doing the work of the white supremacist patriarchy and fighting against the people you should be fighting for and with. Two: Men who are secure don’t care one bit about what gay people are doing behind closed doors. Not only does gayness have nothing to do with them, but on the evolutionary biology level, it also eliminates competitors from the heterosexual competition for mates. Be more like those men, if that is truly your truth.”