so, does no-homo mean the one saying it is NOT a homo or does it mean the one it's being said to IS a homo??? this makes my brain hurt...
Posted on 08/09/2009 7:10:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Do you know how I know you’re gay? You just read this essay in Slate about the rap meme “no homo.” The phrase, in case you’re not familiar with it, is commonly appended to lines in rap that could possibly be interpreted as, well, gay. The essay — which gives a nice primer on the phenomenon, including how it originated as a way for rappers to distance themselves from closeted “down-low brothers” — argues that there’s a possibility that it’s “helping to make hip-hop a gayer place.” Once upon a time, the story goes, rappers would go around telling other men to, say, “suck a bowl of *****,” and no one found this anything other than just plain macho. (Which, given the nature of rape and sexual assault — it is violence, pure and simple, not sex — really kind of makes sense.) But today, “no homo” “tweaks this dynamic because it allows, implicitly, that rap is a place where gayness can, in fact, be expressed by the guy on the mike, not just scorned in others.”
The idea that this phrase represents the glimmers of a new awakening in hip-hop certainly makes sense when you consider that for gays to be considered equals, they must first, in some primordial stage of social understanding, be understood to even exist. (By the way, full disclosure: The essay’s writer, Jonah Weiner, is a colleague and friend of ours. Obligatory “no homo.”) But to call this progress might also be premature. After all, getting playful with gay-sounding phrases isn’t the same as winking at gays. Wordplay is what rappers do, and, in this case, they’re still doing it to explicitly call out what is “gay.” In a sense, “no homo” is just a more evolved way of calling someone a “faggot” — and evolved partly in that it’s more clever. (It also, let it be said, just sounds good. Weiner highlights a line of Lil Wayne’s where, incidentally, he further extends the rhyme: “no homo, though.”)
Cam’ron, the originator of the phrase, might be the most macho rapper going, and was once, arguably, the most creative. His use of the phrase — and his onetime obsession with the color pink — were both innovations and ways of announcing that he’s such a man, he can get away with dressing “gay” or saying “gay” things. A world where people talk about Brüno, Judd Apatow movies, and homoerotic rap wordplay is indeed a world where gayness comes to the fore. However loose it may be, “no homo” is still meant as a lid on such eruptions.
Kanye West supports homosexual marriage.
Why?
What the eff is this dandy talking about??
Is this a Web 2.0/Facebook/MySpace article?
What the hell are they talking about.
My econ prof would have simply wrote “Get to the Damn Point” across this article.
There have been several informative FR threads in the past addressing the extreme misogyny present in rap music and the whole rap culture. What he's saying is that rap is dominated by butch homosexuals and some are beginning to be more open about it.
What a study in New York elitist intellectual sewer gas. Rap has a room temperature IQ and celebrates stupid violence, misogyny and has a predilection about sex with their mothers. Some how I’m not thinkin’ that the “hip hop” community is going to embrace the concept of 50 cent or Eminem with their legs in the air.....
so before we were dealing with cop-killing, woman-hating drug-dealers, but now we have cop-killing, woman-hating drug-dealers who hunger to SMOKE SOME POLE...?
That.....is.....amazing.....and disgusting.
Hey they are talking about the bamsters brown shirts is all.
Yep. Just like butch homosexuality was tolerated amongst the nazis while efiminant homosexuals were persecuted.
So what the heck does this mean?
parsy, who is clueless and no homo, he thinks, unless it means the opposite, in which case he is still straight
I think what the article means to say is that those who perform rap music are homosexual (and that implies that those who listen to it are homosexual as well).
And affirmative action plastic surgeons. Oops! How'd that work out for ya?
Isn’t Queen Latifa a lesbo?
Did he have tenure or free pencils?
(So, you think you had a tough Prof)
so, does no-homo mean the one saying it is NOT a homo or does it mean the one it's being said to IS a homo??? this makes my brain hurt...
The idea that this phrase represents the glimmers of a new awakening in hip-hop certainly makes sense when you consider that for gays to be considered equals, they must first, in some primordial stage of social understanding, be understood to even exist.Y'know, because when white people say it, they're just being closed-minded bigots.
“My econ prof would have simply wrote “Get to the Damn Point” across this article.”
Before we tell anyone that they are a FDRQ....I think we need to tell them to take English 101 first.....maybe even bone head English (English 095) in college. This essay is crap! This student can’t get to the damn point because he can’t even make one!
Either that, or the student who wrote this article couldn’t make sense of the assignment so he (or she) made up a bunch of PC-sounding BS in desperation and then the professor thought it was absolutely brilliant... not that I’ve EVER done anything like that myself...
Oh, and for reference, as far as I’m aware “No homo” is a short way of saying “I know what I just said sounded really gay, but I didn’t mean it that way. I’m actually straight.”
so before we were dealing with cop-killing, woman-hating drug-dealers, but now we have cop-killing, woman-hating drug-dealers who hunger to SMOKE SOME POLE...?
That.....is.....amazing.....and disgusting.
Okay now that I've regained my composure...Wow nice shot!
“Kanye West supports homosexual marriage.”
He’s a gay fish.
ooh, that was ...mean...I mean its the dude’s mom
perhaps,
however she is a 100% reminder that eating pizza hut will make you very very very FAT. (as in overweight not slag phat)
I don’t think it’s saying that the rap world is full of homosexuals but rather that they are acknowledging that there are some in the mix as it were - i.e. They’re everywhere. Even here. If I understand it properly that is.
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