Source: Guardian, Southern Voice
American rap music is an industry ruled by machismo. It is a place where reputations are made by shady pasts, the aura of violence and ultra-masculinity. But now an explosive new book is lifting the lid on one of hip hop's most unexpected secrets: that many people in the business are gay.

Terrance Dean, a former executive at music channel MTV, has penned a memoir of his life and times in the hip hop industry as a gay man. It called an "explosive exposé" by a Guardian reviewer who has read a pre-release copy.

It exposes a thriving gay subculture in an aggressively male business, where anti-gay lyrics and public homophobia are common.

In an one of many recent interviews, Dean said that some of those homophobic lyrics were written by stars on the DL: "Yeah, many of them are just trying to distract from the rumors about themselves."

The book, which comes out Wednesday, is garnering widespread buzz even in pre-release.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many in the industry are nervous about the book's publication, the Guardian reports, fearing that it will expose some of the top black names in music and Hollywood as secretly gay.

But Dean said that his memoir was not intended as a way of outing famous people. "I was never tempted to name any names. The book is not about outing people. I wrote it so that people realize the industry has a gay subculture and we are part of this music," he told Southern Voice.

Despite the widespread concern that Dean would expose the underground queens of hip hop, Dean stays loyal to his fraternity and doesn’t drop any names in "Hiding in Hip Hop," Southern Voice's Ryan Lee reports.

"The reason I don’t name names is because this book is not about them, and I'm not trying to out people," Dean told Lee. "This is my memoir, it's about my experience."

After interning at CNN and landing an entry-level job at the Apollo Theater, Dean was hired as a production assistant for the movies North and Crooklyn. It was a member of the mostly black crew on the Spike Lee film that gave Dean his first glimpse into the secret subculture that existed for black men who wanted to be with other men.

"There was just this connection that we had, certain things we said, and he noticed --" Dean says in the Washington Blade/Southern Voice interview, his voice trailing off as he struggles to articulate the unspoken exchanges that have taken place between men across ages.

"I don’t know, it was just something we just knew, we could identify with each other, the conversations we had," he says. "He invited me over to his house, introduced me to other friends of his who were in the entertainment industry, and that was my first introduction to, 'Oh, there are men like me, but we have to be quiet about our sexuality.'"

Dean dipped his toes into the underground gay scene in New York's entertainment industry, but he was overwhelmed by what awaited when he moved to Los Angeles to take production jobs with The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show and Russell Simmon’s Def Comedy Jam.

"These were people I put on a pedestal, and I never would have assumed would be gay," Dean says of some of the stars he met at discreet gay gatherings. "And being at this event or function with them, and around them, I was like, wow, this is really much bigger than I thought it was."

Dean's book describes a world where many industry executives and some artists are leading secret gay lives, which are often obvious to everyone but rarely talked about. And, despite using some false names, the book contains enough information so that it will undoubtedly spark off a frenzy of speculation as to who some of the characters are in real life, the Guardian's Paul Harris reports.

Like anyone being considered for membership into an underground society, Dean was secretly vetted by someone in L.A.’s down low scene who believed he was a like-minded individual, Southern Voice reports.

"It's like having a sponsor when you enter a crew," Dean says. "I hung out with him for months before he took me to my first DL party. When he took me to the party, it was like he was introducing me, saying, 'He's cool. I know him, and I'm personally vouching for him.'"

Dean told Harris that he hopes that his book he will allow a leading hip hop figure to come out as gay and thus pave the way for the notoriously homophobic industry to come to terms with its secret side. "Within the next year I believe a major artist will come out. They are going to have to be brave but I think they can do it," he said.

And there are, Harris notes, signs that things are changing. Several leading rap artists, including top seller Kanye West, have admitted that homophobia is rampant in the industry and they have spoken out against it. West had previously spoken out against gay lyrics. There are also a handful of openly gay rappers such as Deadlee, who has held national US tours of his music and appeared on television to talk about his sexuality.

Dean figures it's all part of a larger struggle.

"We grow up thinking, oh, that’s what it’s like to be a man," Dean said in the interview with Atlanta's Southern Voice. "But masculinity is not based on how many women you’re fucking, or how much bling you have. It is being responsible, it is being a man in your community."

As he tries to help other men better themselves, Dean knows he is a work in progress when it comes to fully accepting his sexual orientation, even still struggling to hug a male friend in public.

He travels to Atlanta next month for a book signing at Outwrite and “I Am Hip Hop” week, a look at the relationship between gay people and hip hop that Dean is producing with In The Life Atlanta, organizers of Atlanta’s black gay pride festival.

Full article: Hidden gay life of macho hip hop stars | The Guardian
 Out of ‘Hiding’ | Southern Voice