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Spin: “Hip-Hop’s Great Gay Hope, Rainbow Noise.”

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So, this week’s column is on gay hip-hop group Rainbow Noise’s banger “Imma Homo.”
Deal with it.

Last week, Rainbow Noise’s frenetic, queer-friendly rap posse cut “Imma Homo” appeared on gay and GLBTQ-related blogs (the video currently has a respectable 68,000 views), and even sneaked onto a few mainstream hip-hop venues like Bossip, Complex, and World Star Hip-Hop. Though posted on more mainstream sites primarily for its “WTF?” factor, it knocked over quite a few people for being, well, a pretty hot song. “Imma Homo” is nice, minimalist party rap (think Los Angeles’ Jerkin’ scene with a little Young Money thrown in) boasting punch lines for days (current favorite: “I beat the pussy up, call me Dyke Turner”). It isn’t that far removed from a lot of rap that gets played on the radio right now.

Rainbow Noise Ent. is, according to their website, a label based in the Pacific Northwest (Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, specifically) that specializes in “GLBTQ music artists with mainstream appeal.” Referencing “mainstream appeal” seems like a quiet way to differentiate “Imma Homo” from the single-minded, message-over-music “homo-hop” that hovered around the underground for much of the last decade. Thanks to the fall-out from “faggot”-filled invective courtesy of Eminem and pretty much every great ’90s New York rapper, there were rustlings of a corrective movement coming around the corner…

Written by Brandon

April 1st, 2011 at 5:35 pm

Posted in Spin, Spin column

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2 Responses to 'Spin: “Hip-Hop’s Great Gay Hope, Rainbow Noise.”'

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  1. Great article. Did you ever hear about this lesbian duo, Yo Majesty, from like Florida a few years ago? I thought the same thing about them because they seemed much less didactic than a lot of the other homo-hop artists, though I think they were more into dance music than traditional/mainstream hip-hop. “Imma Homo” has some fcking hilarious lines though, I think one of them bragged about AIDS or something? hah

    quan

    1 Apr 11 at 7:51 pm

  2. the track seems in the same musical lane as cassidy’s “i’m a hustla”. fuck yeah.

    regarding the christian/homo music parallel, it seems it’s important to establish party lines in public discourse for a subculture, especially a marginalized one like LGBTQ, but i’m sure i’m not the only one who would like to hear more raps by homosexuals from a personal perspective rather than a politicized one, like a lot of times i’d much rather listen to outkast than public enemy, you know? (not to say those groups are unidimensional though)

    defbingo

    1 Apr 11 at 10:32 pm

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