I don’t know who remembers a few years back it was BIG talk in the Hip Hop community that there was a gay rapper. He came out of nowhere, really. Just popped up and said “Hey!!”. Well after 4 or 5 years the truth was told to Allhiphop.com.
It looks as though the whole thing was a hoax, sham, fraud.
Ivan Matias, is the man behind the hype. He is a known ghost writer, who one day called up the local radio station, Hot 97, and started messing with Funk Master Flex. Well, a few of his friends egged him on and he pursued with the joke some more. Being able to spit a verse on the Angie Martinez show the next day. Getting a good response, Matias took it a step further and contacted a childhood friend and using him as the model for Caushun, the Gay Rapper.
Apparently what went wrong was Caushun, real name Jason Herdon, was supposed to learn the 16’s and use the fame as a gay rapper for his 9-5 as a hair stylist. With fame came greed and Caushun manipulated the situation in a greedy way. Taking the money for 15 seconds of fame. All he was supposed to drop off the demo cds to the radio stations and learn the verses on his off time. He had only memorized 2 verses. All the while he was boosting clothes and got arrested. He was doing Kimora Lee Simmons hair and let it slip that he was the “gay rapper”. Kimora had a record label and signed Caushun, but he was eluding from the fact that he was just the shell to the real act. So Kimora gets him bailed out, puts him up in an apt or whatever and all the while he is saying Matias, his manager is this horrible person. So when he was asked to go into the studio he always had excuses, because he does not know how to really rap.
Get the full story here Allhiphop.com
I wanted to make a note to this interview, because it was a vital interview as far as the Hip Hop culture goes. Like they said in the interview, we all know that there is a lot of underlining homosexuality going on in the music industry and when we think about the Hip Hop community you don’t want to think that homosexuality is an element of our culture. But when Caushun came to the scene, Matias ruffled far more feathers than I think anyone expected.
There are those rumors that float around those few rap names, Queen Latifah, Puffy, Bird Man & Lil’ Wayne, currently I’m hearing rumors about LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes. So, it is there. But personally, I think that if I were to hear a gay man rap about gay issues it would take away the essence of what I grew up in. I did not grow up in a culture that spoke about it. I guess the ‘Gay Rapper’ story was a moment in time that awoke a lot of us to the fact that in this day and age people’s sexuality is just as open and common as asking someone what’s their zodiac sign. Personally, I don’t care. But when you ask what’s someone’s zodiac sign usually you want to see how compatible they are, how crazy they are, or pass pre-judgement because I know someone who was born the same week as them.
In all actuality it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. What someone does in their past time has nothing to do with you or me, but yet we take such interest in it.
It’s like another article I read in the Village Voice last month and they interviewed lesbian women who were the masculine one, AG’s or aggressives, and their portrayal on what it meant to be a lesbian in an urban society (Girls to Men). These women made reference to rappers as a portrayal to how they would treat their girl and clown the other AGs. This article was an eye opener, because I never knew that minority lesbian women had a society. And it was surprising to know that they are still searching for a place to call home, if you know what I mean. Gay men seem to have it all together. They have their ‘houses’, their boys, and their nite life. In this article, it looked as though most of these AG’s were still searching for that niche and they were looking toward the degrading manner of rap lyrics as a motto to follow daily.
I thought that these articles were very revealing on many social levels. And if you are a true Hip Hop head then I suggest you read it. You’ll see what I mean. But only if you really and truly are a Hip Hop connossieur. After you read these two articles you will see how much the times have evolved.
-f@ke
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