Homolatent Masculinity & Hip Hop Culture

Homolatent Masculinity & Hip Hop Culture Moya Bailey

Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 187-199 (Article) Published by State University of New York Press

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pal/summary/v002/2.2.bailey.html

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Homolatent Masculinity & Hip Hop Culture Moya Bailey

Audre Lorde tells us that naming is important. When she introduced herself as a “Black lesbian feminist mother warrior poet,” she was deliberately situating herself and her perspective in a context of co-constitutive identities. 1 Nikki Finney says, “Repetition is holy.”2 Lorde’s continual refrain of her many identities became an incantation of protection in all the spaces she entered, grounding her and signaling to others who she was. I identify as queer. When I call myself queer I do so with similar intention. My favorite definition of queerness comes from the ‘zine Towards the Queerest Insurrection: [Q]ueer is not a stable area to inhabit. Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability—an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous-patriarchy, but also by an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized, and oppressed. Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.3

It is this definition that motivates my consideration of who and what gets placed under the umbrella of queerness. I am concerned about the way queer is deployed in relation to hip hop because patriarchy, misogyny, capitalism, and other forms of kyriarchy often remain key ingredients in the lyrical production

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188  Palimpsest of artists purportedly queering the genre. I want to be deliberate in identifying phenomena that we see in hip hop that trouble our notions of what is imagined as the project of straightness, but also remain critical about the attachment of queer or queerness to that behavior. In wanting to name the particular homosocial behavior of black men in American (U.S.) hip hop culture, I offer the term homolatent: “homo” to foreground the same gender orientation of the behavior and “latent” to foreshadow the “pathological” potential of queer desire’s rupture into the real. Additionally, afrofuturist Octavia Butler’s Patternist book series hosts characters with supernatural powers that are activated through a painful transition process. For those who are unable to transition successfully, their “latent” powers manifest as a penchant for violence and nihilistic destruction waged on those closest to them. The violent nature of homolatent interactions sets it apart from traditional nomenclature used to describe same-sex attraction. Unlike “queer,” “homosexual,” or “same gender loving,” homolatent attempts to address the abjection of desire. In Butler’s Patternist series, a group of humans with special powers evolves alongside the rest of humanity. These human beings are mostly the progeny of the powerful spirit Doro, who is on a quest to find a permanent home for his spirit in the body of one of his breeding program stock. In the process of breeding humans with special powers to find his permanent body home, Doro creates many “failures,” magical human beings who are unable to come into their powers. At the moment they should transition they do not. Latents are depressed, self-harming, and violent individuals whose inability to express their powers turns them into both imploding and exploding creatures that enjoy causing pain. It is this idea of latency, as repressed and thus pressurized power, which informs my thinking about intermasculine interaction in hip hop culture. We are introduced to latents in the first book of Butler’s series. Latents have superhuman powers but don’t transition into harnessing them or don’t transition well. Doro uses them to sire more children with special abilities, but because they are never in control, he is not invested in their survival. Clay is a latent and his brother Seth is not. Clay is jumpy, often angry, and unable to hold down a steady job. He gets flashes of what other people are thinking and cannot control the noise of other people’s thoughts invading his psyche. The visceral experience of being bombarded by the thoughts and feelings of others weighs on Clay, who “in spite of everything . . . does not want to die. He was just becoming less and less able to tolerate the pain of living.”4 The books themselves queer our understandings of race, gender, and ­sexuality. These categories of difference that are often read as fixed become fluid through characters shifting their clothes and/or bodies. But these forms of queerness are not neutral. For some, these shifts mean death and pain and

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destruction. Queerness is not utopic. Its value is conditional, and standpoint matters. The tale raises many questions about consent, freedom, interdependence, and the mutability of identity on both a literal and figurative level. As the series progresses, readers are introduced to more and more disturbed latents, whose health and well-being are compromised by selfmedicating through substances and acting out. The sublimated power of latents leaks out in self-destructive and violent ways. The central character Mary of Mind of My Mind, the second book in the chronology of the story, is an active, someone who has transitioned and has control of her powers. Mary says of her latent cousins, “We used to get in trouble together when we were little. As we grew older and started to receive mental interference we became more antisocial . . . . No transition was supposed to come along and put them back in control of their lives, so let alone, they’d probably wind up in prison or in the morgue before they were a lot older.”5 Butler’s words could easily be applied to the realities of young black men in the contemporary United States. A 2012 study stated that one in four black boys in kindergarten “is convinced he will fail in school.”6 “One in three Black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime.”7 Black men ages fifteen to twenty-nine are more likely to die by homicide than any other cause. 8 The stif led powers of latents conjure the subjugated spirits of black men in a racialized United States. Black men have much to be depressed about. One in fourteen African American men are incarcerated compared to one in 106 among white men. 9 One in three black men will go to prison in their lifetime. Controversial policies such as New York City’s Stop and Frisk, a practice that allows police to stop and frisk people at will, disproportionately target black people. In 2011, 53 percent of the people who were stopped and frisked were black. 10 Twenty-five and six-tenths percent of stops were young black men, despite the fact that they make up just 1.9 percent of the city’s population. 11 According to Bloomberg. com, “The employment/population ratio for black males aged 16–24 was thirty three percent in August, vs. fifty two percent for white males of the same age group. But the black number is skewed upward by the exclusion of jail and prison inmates. The white number is also skewed upward, but less so because a smaller share of young white males are incarcerated.”12 These statistics tell part of the story; the ways in which state violence creates a vicious cycle of immobility for black men needs further unpacking. Stereotypes about black men impact the way people treat black boy children, setting in motion a series of events that lead to low expectations and squelched dreams. A 2012 study in the state of California found that “1 in 6 black males between 15 and 25 were out of school, out of work or incarcerated.”13 Black students are being suspended and expelled at disproportionate rates largely through a catchall disciplinary category in zero tolerance policies

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190  Palimpsest called “willful defiance,” which means a student can do anything: curse, violate dress code, or roll their eyes at a teacher. Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president and chief executive of the nonprofit South Los Angeles Community Coalition says, “There’s a bit of profiling that goes on, particularly with low-income African-American and Latino boys . . . . A white girl can scream and slam books on the desk and not be seen as threatening, but a black boy can do half of that and it can be taken as ‘he’s going to hit me.’”14 These disparities in school discipline have dire consequences. Students that have been suspended are three times more likely to encounter the juvenile justice system. 15 The school-to-prison pipeline pushes black male students in particular out of school and into the criminal industrial complex. With so much negativity heaped onto young black men, it is no surprise that the few axes of social capital that they can leverage are most often the privileges of masculinity and straightness. My term homolatent attempts to more accurately encapsulate the ways in which masculinity and heterosexuality are signaled through tenuous performative utterances that often include homosocial behavior that isn’t erotic in a Lordian sense, or sexual in the ways that queer men express their desire for each other. While there is a hyperrelational connection between masculine of center people, in that much of hip hop–influenced black masculinity is dependent on masculine people’s relationships to each other and not with women, I hesitate to call it simply homosocial. We know of many cultures that are homosocial where men hold hands, can be affectionate and intimate with each other without being considered gay; but within the rigid box of straight black masculinity in the United States, most elements of touch are percussive and quick. Dapping, butt pats, back slaps have intensity and brevity, purposefully staccato to hold the lingering, sensuous touch at bay. Straight black men have clearly defined parameters about when and where they can touch each other. The repetitive use of the phrase “no homo” signals an anxiety around the fragility of straightness. “No homo” becomes its own incantation of protection of heterosexuality and butch masculinity. Theorists interested in exposing the tenuousness of heterosexual identity and inspired by the analytical plasticity of queer apply the term to actions, behaviors, and performances by people who self identify as straight. I appreciate the ways that this strategy creates coalition across unlikely constituencies. Cathy Cohen’s foundational piece, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics,” is a shining example of what groups queer theory can bring under the same umbrella. 16 However, Cohen is very careful not to conflate the ways that minoritarian subjects are queered by their nonnormative status in a white supremacist heterosexist capitalist patriarchy with queer identity. I offer homolatent as a term that adds to the lexicon of queer theory by describing a particular dynamic in the relationships of heterosexual

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black men to each other. How do representations of masculinity in hip hop represent homolatency? When connecting this afrofuturist-derived term to discussions of hip hop, the music collective Odd Future Wolfgang Kill Them All makes for an obvious example. Their violent lyrics, objectification of women, Jackass-like 17 antics, and homophobia despite or perhaps because of the presence of Frank Ocean 18 and Syd, 19 all speak to a grandiose performance of pain and violence that is inextricably linked to masculinity. The sexualities of group members do not actually matter because it is their gender performances that unite the brood. In a now-infamous MTV video clip, Syd recounts her conversation with her father about being the only cis woman in an all cis man crew. Syd says, “When I first stated fucking with Odd Future heavy my dad was like ‘Really? Like, they talk about like some crazy shit and you’re as a female like you’re slapping a lot of other females in the face.’ I’m like, ‘That’s what I do. I slap bitches, Dad.’”20 Syd’s comment is met with laughter from other Odd Future members. She is one of the boys through her willingness to slap bitches. Her belonging is connected to her gender identity and performance, which in this clip is constituted through articulated violence against women. The group coheres around a homogeneous gender expression that repeatedly ridicules women. Syd’s lesbian identity and willingness to set herself apart from other women support her position in the group. The odd futurification of mainstream hip hop further illustrates the ubiquity of the “I’m different” aesthetic and homolatent content. The 2 Chainz and Kanye West video for “Birthday Song” follows an odd futurist template, featuring people who have non-normative bodies that are used as window dressing in a video that objectifies women and celebrates the material. Using the backdrop of his own dystopic, suburban house birthday party, 2 Chainz moves through a hodgepodge of disjointed imagery. An Indian man with glasses drinks a “40” and dances strangely while looking directly into the camera. A little person runs up the steps of the house after a mob pulls a fat white clown from a car and beat him with bats and golf clubs. Ambivalent quadruplets get lap dances from strippers all swathed in a hipster chic aesthetic. 21 The chorus, “All I want for my birthday is a big booty ho,” is animated in myriad ways, with women moving and dancing for 2 Chainz and Kanye West’s visual pleasure. There’s a cake shaped like a woman’s butt, replete with a thong icing; and a black woman covered in icing and candles lies atop the kitchen table as family members chair dance in the background. A woman jumps out of the cake. What is interesting is that the men never touch the women. The unnamed video vixens perform the work of props, adding to the scene, but on the periphery of the camera’s attention on more central characters. They flank Kanye as he rides a bicycle and dances for other men in the video. There are many women who the viewer understands meet 2 Chainz specifications, but

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192  Palimpsest he does not speak to them. He talks to the camera. Kanye’s lyrics reference another man, the imagined listener who deserves a ménage à trois because of his presumed financial contributions to the life of the imagined girlfriend. Hip hop scholars continue to explore the ways in which cis men speak almost exclusively to each other in hip hop. These homosocial behaviors necessitate a female referent, but she is rarely a speaking subject in these contexts. The imagery is caustic and jarring for effect. These artists move beyond the wink wink, nudge nudge racism of standup comics like Sarah Silverman, unflinchingly delivering lines that are shockingly grotesque—daring anyone to voice dissent. They anticipate and dismiss critique in the same breath. After telling the imagined cis man listener that he deserves a threesome, Kanye raps, “I’m just joking, I’m just serious . . . ” He then goes on to say that if a woman is with him she had better perform sexually as he desires or suffer the consequences. 22 The repetition of the same tropes lyrically and visually in the interview clip with Syd and the imagery of “Birthday Song” is evocative of trends in numerous popular rap music videos in 2012. There is a religiosity to the recurrent and purposely profane messages in the music. Repetition is holy. Another important recapitulated component of homolatent masculinity evidenced in rap music is the interplay between depression and nihilism. “Birthday Song” has a haunting beat and lyrics that anticipate death. 2 Chains refrains, “When I die bury me inside the Gucci store,” and alternately, “Louis store,” or “booty club,” signal an escapist life where status and prurient interest reign supreme. Death is imminent and unremarkable. All 2 Chainz wants for his birthday is a big booty ho, but in death “bury [him] next to two bitches.”23 The party does not stop in death. Black men in hip hop have long rapped about alcohol and weed. When the West Coast was ruling rap radio in the 1990s, references to marijuana and alcohol as everyday coping mechanisms were common. The substances and their purposes have shifted. As I wrote in a co-authored blog post with Whitney Peoples on the Crunk Feminist Collective: [T]he types of drugs referenced are changing—We’ve moved from Mary Jane to Molly, crack to codeine. Where is the collective concern over these new narratives of addiction and the ways in which they might point to depression, PTSD, apathy, nihilism, etc.? Recreational drug use seems to be replaced with self-medicating and binge activities . . . . In Wayne’s track, Bitches Love Me, “pussy, money, weed, codeine” are rattled off as equivalent substances, raising more questions about the reduction of women to anatomy and object, consumable goods for self medicated consumption.24

The materialism and conspicuous consumption of hip hop culture is never recognized as a symptom of depression. According to the Diagnostic and

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­ tatistical Manual IV used by psychologists and psychiatrists to evaluate mental S health concerns, a manic episode of depression can be identified through “excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments).”25 Like their latent counterparts, black men in hip hop culture are self-medicating in ways that are unsustainable and ultimately self-annihilating. Despite the ever present nihilism in hip hop, it is seldom the focus of sustained feminist inquiry. Music scholar, feminist, and hip hop aficionado Mark Anthony Neal has asked fellow enthusiasts to reimagine the age-old debate in hip hop. As opposed to making easy, obvious claims that current rap music is sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc., Neal suggests we look for possibilities in the genre, moments that rupture the hegemonic script of what most folks who do not listen to hip hop imagine it to be. He asks that we look at the gestures by individual rappers that work in the service of queering hip hop by providing a fluid or dynamic representation that belies a static and monolithic rendering of the music. In this vain, Neal looks to Jay-Z, a fixture on the hip hop landscape, and assesses the gestures he makes that trouble traditional black masculinity in hip hop representation, particularly as the rapper has tried to negotiate his presence in a genre so tied to youth while he continues to age. For Neal, queer means a departure from rap masculinity as it is normally rendered. To this end, he sites Jigga’s dress, video treatments, and global presence as markers of his queering hip hop masculine performance. 26 However, Jay-Z’s somewhat alternative performance still maintains hegemony as exerted through classed and raced representations of masculinity. Neal’s investigation of Shawn Carter lends itself to a discussion of selfproclaimed protégé, “best rapper alive since the best rapper retired,” the other Carter in the game, Lil’ Wayne. Wayne’s prolific presence in all genres of music since 2000 makes him an important figure to examine as well. Wayne’s former refusal to perform a black masculinity that is respectable in any capacity, a masculinity that screams, “I don’t give a fuck,” to Jay’s now more manicured metrosexual appeal, provides a point of departure to think about other forms of masculinity within hip hop. On his second album after his first rap retirement, Jay-Z’s track “30 Something” spoke to his maturation. “I use to let my pants sag, not givin’ a fuck, bae boy now I’m all grown up,” suggesting Jay-Z has shed his youthful angst, pulling up pants instead of the proverbial bootstraps with his class and age ascension. 27 Jay-Z has refashioned his image into a socially acceptable, albeit cool, entrepreneur. Rather than critique the systemic forces that propelled his early career in the drug trade, he has embraced them, putting a ring on it, becoming a UN spokesperson, and gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods in the name of owning a piece of the Nets. 28 Through his newfound wealth,

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194  Palimpsest Jay has expanded his street, read black, masculinity to incorporate a preppy white masculinity that black men have traditionally derided. Working-class and poor masculinities have relied on physical prowess to assert power, which has translated into the clothes they wear. Jay-Z’s massive wealth has enabled him to assert his masculinity as a businessman, a traditionally white role with a different masculine aesthetic. In contrast, Weezy f. baby or Lil’ Wayne, a man of multiple monikers himself, refuses to grow up. His age has been hovering around twenty-five since 2007; and though his pants have gotten tighter with the new skinny jeans trend, they have not gotten any higher. His public use of drugs, hair in locks, a body & face covered in tattoos, explicit lyrics, and five baby mamas, disrupt notions of a middle-class black respectability. Though married for two years, Wayne divorced and has, in a song popularized in the summer of 2009, proclaimed his desire to “fuck every girl in the world.”29 His polyamrous relationships are not one-sided, as he claims not to judge women for how many men they have slept with and does not seem to expect monogamy from his partners either. He is also known for rapping about performing oral sex on women, a reciprocity that has increased in lyrical popularity due in no small part to his pronouncements. Additionally, he has yet to distance himself from the homosocial world of rap music, preferring the company of an all-male entourage to a woman on his arm. He and his mentor and chosen father figure Birdman are known for showing affection for each other by kissing on the lips, queer for most men, and particularly among black men. What comes across most clearly in Wayne’s music and self-presentation is a nihilism and abhorrence of futurity that rivals queer theorist Lee Edelman’s as expressed in his volume, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Despite being a father, Wayne’s own desires come first, even when they endanger his own life—a direct challenge to the benevolent patriarch of nuclear parenting. At one point, he allowed his then thirteen-year-old daughter and friends to join him on stage as he sang his song, “We Like Her Too,” with the chorus, “I wish I could fuck every girl in the world,” a moment that sparked outrage among bourgeois black folks who would prefer the literal referents not be on stage at the moment they are invoked. Wayne is very public about his addiction to “sizzrup,” a cough syrup and liquor concoction that is always on hand in the Styrofoam cup he is known for carrying. His explicit, even for rap music, descriptions of sex, rumored the result of child sexual abuse perpetrated and or organized by Birdman, mirror Edelman’s thoughts on queer negativity. Sex for Wayne is ubiquitous and definitely not for the sole purpose of procreation. Wayne embodied the “stubborn particularity that voids every notion of a general good.”30 Wayne’s gestures are disruptive, but like Jay-Z’s, they still reproduce hegemony. In keeping the misogyny, sexism, homophobia, etc. off the table,

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Wayne still objectifies women and supports capitalism. His once irreverent anti-respectability stance has been tempered by criticism. He has since tried to show his softer side by releasing the ballad “How to Love.” Wayne once rejected the implicit task of the black wealthy to create a nonthreatening consumable image. Wayne’s disruptive and unapologetically nihilist lifestyle prompts other questions. But lest the queering of hip hop only be read as a gestural romance of the negative, I will turn my attention to the queer folks who claim queerness and address it in lyrical and visual content. Contemporary artists, such as The Lost Bois, name and embrace queerness and are actively challenging standards of what hip hop can be. The Lost Bois consists of two individuals who grew up girls but have gender identities that are intentionally fluid. Pronouns shift as frequently as lyrical content. Graduates of Oberlin College, B. Steady and A. O. Awkward Original rep queerness in every line they pen. One of their biggest hits, “Sincerely,” expresses the sweetness of a queer on queer crush, as each member of the duo pursues a love interest that queers hetero and homonormative expectations.31 Not only are the love interests women, their identity as cis or trans gendered is unclear. They cross gender partnering expectations as well as racial lines in the visual representation of this video. B. Steady sings that her “cool aesthetic has been destroyed and that you’ve reduced me to nothing but a school boy.”32 B. challenges gender constructions by alternately referring to herself as both a boy and girl. Masculinity is no longer the sole province of cisgender men and vulnerability becomes a possibility for women in the genre. In another track, The Lost Bois dream about a day when they can be the princes to the knight of their object of desire. “Strap Step” is an ode to queer sex with a strap on, which they make clear, in a humorous warning before the song, is not the only way queer women have sex. The Lost Bois are just one example of the contemporary chorus of out and queer performers. Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz, Le1f, TheeSatisfaction, Pink Dollaz, and Krip Hop stars such as Leroy Moore and others are queer beyond the scope of their sexuality but through the intentionally transgressive content they create in their music. By expanding public understandings of queer to encompass an intentional transformative ethic, we can open ourselves up to the liminal subjects that offer new possibilities in a publicly stagnant genre. By being more precise in our identifications of what is queer and what is perhaps homolatent in hip hop, we can better articulate the multiple social forces that inform artists’ works. Wayne’s romance of the negative is indicative of a common thread in hip hop music that is often dismissed instead of engaged. In his article “Exploring the Generation Gap,” Christopher Tyson notes the nihilism in rap music and advocates for its expulsion from black consciousness. He wants hip hop to

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196  Palimpsest “boldly accept its responsibility as a vehicle for conscious social organization.”33 I have no such design for hip hop. Though I praise the Lil’ Wayne answer record created by Watoto from the Nile, three black girls ranging in age from seven to nine frustrated with his degrading lyrics and representations of black women in his videos, I am wary of an overly proscriptive hip hop that delineates a particular kind of progressive narrative that is patriarchal, heterosexist and classist in own right.34 When we instruct the next generation that our critiques are leveled at language choice as opposed to the ideology that informs the use of bitch and ho, or the infrastructure that supports their negative impact on marginal subjects, we remain locked in a reactionary dynamic that does not transform conditions. Nihilism is an underlying ideology that informs what Wayne and other rappers of his ilk create. When one does not give a fuck, a call to use more politically correct language because it’s the right thing to do or even because it grants women their humanity are not compelling arguments. It does not address the epistemological position that informs rap’s rhetorical choices. If rappers continually claim they don’t care in general, why would or should they care about the impact of their words on a subset of the population that they have been socialized into thinking are not of much importance any way? Note that I said that rappers claim not to care. Performance artist and author Yolo Akili says, “When people say ‘I don’t care’ they are really saying it hurts too much to care.” The lived realities of Wayne and other rappers who come from inner city neighborhoods decimated by structural and interpersonal violence are such that to care about life or living can be painful. In a cultural context that denies men, particularly black men, the space to express emotions such as hurt, sorrow, etc., this pain mutates into a dismissive cool and aggressive stance most often directed at the people closest to home—those who are much easier to access than those whose actions create the context that breeds hood nihilism. Like Butler’s latents, black men are experiencing intense emotions that threaten to leak out in ways that harm the people closest to them. In one of Wayne’s post–Hurricane Katrina odes to the people of New Orleans he raps, “I knock on the door, hope isn’t home/ fates not around, the lucks all gone/ first came the hurricane, then the morning sun/Excuse me if I’m on one, and don’t trip if I light one, I walk a tight.”35 Wayne’s rhymes do a lot in a few bars. He articulates a despair that has no silver lining. Life itself is a question. And when his existence is not guaranteed, do not begrudge him self-medicating with drugs, or alcohol, or sex as other songs suggest. His depressive symptoms are legible even as critics overlook the evidence. He critiques the social demand for being present and aware by highlighting the disturbing images and experiences that he would prefer to shut out. George Bush does not care about black people, and subsequently did not do enough to

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help black survivors of the hurricane. Wayne’s critique is structural and points to intense emotional pain that one person can hardly withstand. When we focus Lil’ Wayne’s nihilism and its underlying hurt, we can create a more radical plan of action for smashing kyriarchy. Feminism has not articulated a viable response to the call, “I don’t give a fuck.” Why should someone give one? Why should one hope if “hopes not home?” This line of reasoning demanded that I ask myself why I still care when it hurts too much. Having access to a community of people who feel similarly helps me. Through connection, I access the possible. Nihilism and community can equal a win. Nihilism and individualism is depressing, but perhaps the communal nature of homolatent relationships can foment new possibilities of transition. I see a connection between my own jaded outlook and dissociative reaction to sexist hip hop and the music itself. I do not want to care so deeply about the underlying anguish masked in misogynistic bravado because it hurts too much. It is not so much that nothing matters, but that it matters so much that to really open oneself up to the depth of that feeling is overwhelming. In grappling with my own desire to ignore the hurt I have felt regarding the music, I began to see the generative space that only nihilist negativity can offer. I am admittedly protective of queerness; and though I am sure queerness is capacious enough not to need my protection, I also think that being more deliberate in naming the world around us helps keep complexity and nuance in our theorizing. Homolatent is my attempt to move toward more specif icity in our language about the dynamics at work in a particular location. I do not think that this is the only way to describe masculinity in relation to hip hop and I hope that it opens up the possibility for more serious theorizing about the way we deploy queer and what we mean when we use it. Notes 1. Teresa de Lauretis, “Feminism and Its Differences,” Pacific Coast Philology 25, no. 1/2 (Nov. 1990): 24. 2. Nikky Finney’s 2011 National Book Award in Poetry Acceptance Speech, 2011. http:// w w w.youtube.com /watch?v=BFSiK x-hzks & feature =youtube_gdata_player. Accessed Dec. 12, 2012. 3. Mary Nardini Gang, “Towards the Queerest Insurrection,” Zine, n.d. 4. Octavia E. Butler, Seed to Harvest: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark, and Patternmaster (New York: Open Road Media, 2012), 80. 5. Ibid., 40. 6. “Black Boys See Bleak Future at School,” SFGate; http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Black-boys-see-bleak-future-at-school-4088520.php#src=f b. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012.

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198  Palimpsest 7. “The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States”; http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/ news/2012 /03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-colorand-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 8. Kaiser Family Foundation, “Race, Ethnicity & Health Care Fact Sheet: Young African American Men in the United States,” July 2006. 9. See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2012). 10. Christopher Mathias, “NYPD Stop And Frisks: 15 Shocking Facts About A Controversial Program,” Huff ington Post; http://w w w.huff ingtonpost. com/2012/05/13/nypd-stop-and-frisks-15-shocking-facts_n_1513362.html. Accessed May 13, 2012. 11. Ibid. 12. Peter Coy, “The Plight of Young, Black Men Is Worse Than You Think,” BusinessWeek: Global_economics; http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-28/ the-plight-of-young-black-men-is-worse-than-you-think. Accessed Sept. 28, 2012. 13. Jill Tucker, “Black Boys See Bleak Future at School,” San Francisco Gate ; http://w w w.sfgate.com /education /article /Black-boys-see-bleak-future-atschool-4088520.php. Accessed Dec. 3, 2012. 14. “California Advocates Seek To Reduce Student Suspensions By Axing ‘Willful Defiance’ Charge,” Huffington Post; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/07/ defiance-seen-as-cause-of_n_1409982.html. Accessed April 7, 2012. 15. Ibid. 16. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 21–51. 17. An MTV show from 2000 to 2002 where Johnny Knoxville and friends perform stunts and pull pranks on one another like punching each other in the genitals, etc. 18. Frank Ocean is a member of Odd Future who wrote an open letter expressing a past unrequited romantic love for another man. 19. Formerly Syd tha Kid, Syd is the only woman identified member of Odd Future and is an out lesbian. 20. 2 Chainz—Birthday Song (Explicit) Ft. Kanye West, 2012; http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Y34jC4I1m70&feature=youtube_gdata_player. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. “Trigger Warning - How to Love?: Thoughts on Wayne’s ‘Emmett Till’ Lyrics and More,” The Crunk Feminist Collective; http://www.crunkfeministcollective. com/2013/03/01/trigger-warning-how-to-love-thoughts-on-waynes-emmett-tilllyrics-and-more/. Accessed March 27, 2013. 25. Jonathan Ritvo and Harvey Causey, “Community-Based Treatment” (2008); http://dsm.psychiatryonline.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/content.aspx?bookid=2 2& sectionid=1890370 #2268. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012.

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26. Mark Anthony Neal, “NewBlackMan (in Exile): All ‘Growed’ Up: Rethinking Jay Z,” NewBlackMan (in Exile), Dec. 7, 2006; http://newblackman.blogspot. com/2006/12/all-growed-up-rethinking-jay-z.html. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 27. “Jay-Z—30 Something,” Rap Genius, http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-30-somethinglyrics. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 28. “Applied Research Center—Jay-Z, The Black Branch Rickey, Brings The Nets, And Gentrif ication”; http://arc.org/content/view/1683 /48/; United Nations News Service Section, “UN News—Annan, Jay-Z Announce UN-MTV Global Campaign on World’s Water Crisis,” UN News Service Section, August 9, 2006; http://w w w.un.org/apps /news /story.asp?NewsID = 19459 & Cr=water& Cr1 #. UMh-WHPjmC0; Julee Wilson, “Beyonce And Jay-Z’s 4th Wedding Anniversary: The Couple’s Cutest Moments (PHOTOS),” Huffington Post, April 4, 2012; http://www.huff ingtonpost.com/2012 /04/04/beyonce-and-jayz-4-yearanniversary_n_1403135.html. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 29. “Lil Wayne (Ft. Drake, Gudda Gudda, Jae Millz & Mack Maine)—Every Girl,” Rap Genius; http://rapgenius.com/Lil-wayne-every-girl-lyrics. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 30. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 6. 31. Sincerely the Lost Bois, 2009; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWBw3q0iZTY &feature=youtube_gdata_player. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012. 32. Ibid. 33. Yvonne Bynoe, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership, and Hip Hop Culture (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004). 34. Watoto From The Nile —Letter to Lil Wayne (Of f icial Music V ideo) * * *Now on I T U N ES , 2 0 1 1 ; ht t p : //w w w.yout ub e .com /w atc h ? v = j-TVR0WZw&feature=youtube_gdata_player. 35. “Lil Wayne (Ft. Robin Thicke)—Tie My Hands,” Rap Genius; http://rapgenius. com/Lil-wayne-tie-my-hands-lyrics#note-160187. Accessed Dec. 9, 2012.

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