I Don't Want to Die Poor

by Michael Arceneaux

  Some are more plausible than others.

  * * *

  One of my proudest moments in my work as indentured literary servant for multiple media outlets with varied levels of capital in the role of an opinions dispenser was writing television recaps of Love & Hip Hop—specifically Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.

  During that moment when television recaps—on reality shows, for sure—were enjoying peak online consumption, there were many talented people offering some of the finest humor writing for pennies on the dollar as they chronicled the contemporary human conundrum that is being paid to argue with a relative stranger a television producer has convinced you is out to get you. The recaps that garnered the most attention on mainstream outlets were ones featuring predominately rich white cast members. I don’t want to say I deserved at least a shout-out on Story Insta every Juneteenth, because it’s not like I was a columnist for the North Star, but it was an artful contribution all the same.

  The production team behind the show thought so anyway.

  One day, I’ll tell whatever youths are near me to gather around and go to YouTube in order to see the infamous Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta reunion featuring Joseline Hernandez and Stevie J—fueled by rage and whatever else left to speculation, bringing chaos to the reunion stage—with Joseline in particular going out of her way to fight every single person that ever said something slick about her while standing in front of a green screen. I’ll tell them that I was there that day, and minutes before it all popped off, production team members were coming to meet me to say hello and thank me for recapping the show the way the other shows did on mainstream outlets (the team was majorly white before anyone makes an assumption).

  I started to run into the people highest up that totem pole at other events. One of them, very high up, was once at the same premiere as me. They came over to say hello and asked how I had been, telling me they still kept up on my writing. I then found out why Love & Hip Hop: Houston was effectively shut down (gun control is necessary not solely for our safety, but also for the television spinoffs we crave). After hearing the specifics and going, “Yeah, that sounds like Houston,” I mentioned buying a few of the new singles from select Love & Hip Hop cast members.

  “Wait, you really buy those?”

  They were shocked.

  Some of the cast members of Love & Hip Hop have genuine talent. Others are more or less becoming novelty acts with very little pretense about possessing any discernible musical skill set, but with the hope that they can at least boost their club appearance fees with music that can be streamed.

  Momma Dee, rapper Lil’ Scrappy’s mom, is a former pimp and nurse turned reality star who first dabbled in singing with “I Deserve.” I adore her, and the song was catchy, but the vocals weren’t there, and sadly, the “Anita Faker” market is grossly limited in its reach. Ever the hustler, however, Momma Dee released a dance song, “In That Order” featuring Yung Joc, a rapper who used to have hits before becoming a hair model on VH1 reality shows. I love Black people almost as much as Black people love a line dance. I bought the single because it was surprisingly catchy and I appreciated Momma’s energy levels in the video, considering she’s a grandmother who one presumes has been shot at a few times in her past and all.

  I love Karlie Redd’s “Louie Prada Gucci.” The song was never officially released, but I ripped it from her SoundCloud and put it on my phone with my own main image so it’s fine. I don’t know if I would classify her as a singer, but she’s not a rapper. She’s like the vessel for the Auto-Tune who is a multi-hybrid talent. She, too, has no business in music, but a bop is a bop.

  There have been gay rappers featured on the show, but most of their coverage has been centered on fighting, coming out, and fighting. I love us for real, but focus on the point of the show. Or not.

  Some of the artists from the show are better than you would expect. Cyn Santana is best known for dating Love & Hip Hop star Erica Mena, who can’t sing worth a damn, and Joe Budden, who can rap well but now makes money as a podcaster and television personality (in spite of past allegations of physically abusing women, no less), but her single was somewhat surprisingly impressive. To me, that means all you have to do is have sex with two types of artists—one with marginal at best ability and one with exceptional skills—and then combine the parts of their soul you sucked out of them, to make your own studio sessions go swimmingly. Maybe I should have sex with Lil’ Fizz and then Drake before I hit the booth?

  I want to do a song with Cyn Santana.

  There is something inspiring about people who many might argue have no business in music going ahead and creating bops, but I don’t want to be novelty, so of this genre of entertainer I’m more along the lines of K. Michelle and Lyrica Anderson, in that I socialize with the crazy and dabble in it myself from time to time, for a Mona Scott-Young check, but overall my music is taken seriously, even if I am not always to be taken seriously myself.

  Another option for my rap dreams: becoming the Black Donald Glover.

  I’m joking! I swear on my contempt for white supremacy and game nights. I know that Black people are not a monolith and I do indeed watch Atlanta. He’s totes Black, but I do feel like white people didn’t share him until his hair grew out more and he started looking like Billy Dee Williams exactly when his Lando Calrissian kicked in.

  I admire Donald Glover’s career because while we’re not the same variety of Black man, we both share the quality of not being the ideal candidate for a successful mainstream male rapper. There are certain kinds of Black men you would typically associate with rap stardom, and they’re not traditionally like Glover. I know Drake is also cited, but I think he ought to come with an asterisk because while Aubrey sings ear-pleasing tunes that are often de facto passive-aggressive odes to strippers who left him on read, he’s a Canadian yet somehow manages to sound like he’s from Houston or Memphis or London or South Africa or some part of the Caribbean at any given moment. He’s a nice middle-class mixed child of God and a man who dresses like a villain from the blaxploitation hit Coffy actively trying to blend in. That’s why Donald Glover might one day cuss me smooth out for that joke, but at least I didn’t call him an incredibly talented hood hopper.

  I liked Childish Gambino’s “This Is America,” but I don’t want to have to explain racism to white people. I have to constantly make arguments for myself and marginalized people as a whole in my work now. Glover, who performs under the moniker, made it look fun, but I strongly doubt it would be any less worrisome for me with a drumbeat and cute choreography. Let the Negro wunderkind have it.

  I just want to be a nigga.

  A nigga without substance.

  Who just smiles all day.

  You know the way a post–prison release, post–fitness journey Gucci Mane just smiles?

  I want to be able to smile like Gucci Mane.

  And I want to dress like 2 Chainz.

  Truth be told, “the gay 2 Chainz” is the vision I accompanied my rap dreams revelation with.

  2 Chainz went to college, so he can read, but Tity Boi isn’t necessarily attempting to tantalize your brain cells with his rhymes. It’s bars about being rich, wearing Versace, and rapping better than everyone. I can think of no greater paradise.

  It’s not about trying to be like a straight man. I just can’t think of any other rappers who I grew up with having more fun than southern ones.

  I have long had a title for my first mixtape: Cognac and Celexa.

  Cognac in honor of the type of brown liquor most beloved by Black elders, and Celexa, my favorite antidepressant. Obviously, I’ve been stewing over my track listing for several years. I already know I want to sample Rihanna rapping “I bet you niggas gon’ be like, ‘Bitch, that’s my fucking song’ ” for a lead single. Speaking of niggas, I already know what subjects I want to cover: being a nigga; being that nigga; being a nigga from Houston; being that nigga from Houston; being a rich nigga; being a rich nigga that’s that nigga. I’ll be sur
e to include the additional required nods to pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

  I do want to switch it up in some respects. I know every now and then a mainstream rapper wants to work with a gospel artist in order to make their Black moms and Jesus happy, but I’d like to try a spin on that. Instead of seeking conversion therapy or entertaining sociopathy in order to tell the lie that I am straight in order to impress Donnie McClurkin, I’ll find some wayward Christian to croon about committing a little sin like sodomy instead. I imagine none of the premier Winans would agree to this, but there has to be a third cousin who can sing a lil’ bit with enough hot tea around that would agree to joining me in sharing a heathen’s tale. If not, we can find somebody to yell like a Baptist in the background for effect.

  I would also love to make a couple of mumble rap records. For people like me who can’t always remember the words anyway but still want to sing along with everyone at the day party you said you’d only stay an hour at before you lose your entire Sunday, I find this to be an olive branch to the wider community.

  I have some things to consider.

  Originally, I planned to make my rap name Youngsinick. It’s a nod to my old blog, The Cynical Ones, and a post I made where I first gave hints of wanting to rap. That is to say, if you believe including in the post a picture of me fitted with foil in the front of my teeth as a preview of a grill constitutes only a hint. There were haters in the comments, too, but I think they wanted better for the name. I can’t go by “young” anymore either. If Jeezy let go of it, I have to follow in his infinite wisdom.

  I haven’t settled on whether or not I wanted to play a character à la Rick Ross. Through him, an ex–corrections officer who took on the persona of a drug dealer named Rick Ross (who will contact you on Facebook if you are a member of the press to tell you the “real story,” FYI), I learned you can be fake as fuck and claim being a real one all the same. Insert the Rick Ross grunt here, which, by the way, used to be my text message alert. That’s no dig to Rick Ross, but a salute to a dedicated thespian. I’ll more than likely opt to be only myself at the club after the orders of tequila and soda have kicked in. I want to be the kind of rapper who dances on tables at clubs anyway.

  The only problem is there is no version of any of these men in mainstream hip-hop. Donald Glover is different, but he’s straight so there’s more space for him than there would be for me to be absorbed by mainstream rap culture rather than having to gnaw at it in order to break through. It’s much harder for people to envision a gay male commercial rapper.

  That’s not to say gay rappers don’t exist. Plenty of them do. Mykki Blanco. Le1f.

  Lil Nas X. Cakes Da Killa. Big Freedia. Many others. None of them are the same, and each of them is breaking down barriers. Still, hip-hop and queer hip-hop remain relatively separate, through no fault of their own. That doesn’t negate gay rappers’ successes or suggest they won’t break down even great barriers in their careers; it’s just that being pioneering is as challenging as it is rewarding.

  They ultimately have to contend with the homophobia that may no longer be strangling hip-hop, but much as in the greater society that hip-hop reflects, is still enough to make things only bearable, not equitable.

  On one end, I can appreciate a rapper like Young Thug for wearing frocks and being comfortable enough to refer to fellow straight male rapper friends as “hubby,” “my love,” and “babe” without much concern. He’s been met with slight ridicule from older rappers like Snoop Dogg on occasion, but for the most part, he’s relatively free to be. That’s good for him but frustrating given that if he were actually gay, the responses would be different.

  That homophobia is informed by misogyny, and given that mainstream hip-hop culture has yet to fully reconcile with that, I have doubts about how good it can ever conceivably get.

  Take XXXTentacion, the pregnant woman–beating rapper who also beat up a gay inmate and bragged about it, and how promptly he was canonized after he was killed. I’m aware an entire generation of younger people admires him, but if we’re to truly speak about progress in hip-hop, what does it say that someone capable of that not only was born in 1998, but saw his misogyny, homophobia, and violent outbursts glossed over the same way the behavior of the other monsters before him was?

  Now compare that with the living gay rapper ILoveMakonnen, who in 2015 came out via Twitter: “As a fashion icon, I can’t tell u about everybody else’s closet, I can only tell u about mine, and it’s time I’ve come out. And since y’all love breaking news, here’s some old news to break, I’m gay. And now I’ve told u about my life, maybe u can go life [sic] yours.”

  I knew ILoveMakonnen as that dude who mumbled “club goin’ up on a Tuesday” on the 2014 single “Tuesday.” In theory, that’s the gist of my preference for sound, but overall ILoveMakonnen is more of indie rock, come down from the high music. Different strokes. Regardless, his coming out was supposed to initiate a shift.

  In an interview with Rolling Stone, Migos responded to Makonnen’s coming out. “They supported him?” questioned Quavo. His cohorts Offset and Takeoff were more direct in their responses. “This world is not right,” said Takeoff, while Offset said that the support only came “because the world is fucked up.”

  These comments agitated me because I love Migos’s music and didn’t need them to become the audible answer to my favorite combo at Chick-fil-A. And when I say love, I would consider it an honor and a privilege to become the Jean Terrell of Migos after Quavo leaves for good because he thinks he’s the Beyoncé of the trio when he is their Camila Cabello, which is fine but not the same no matter how one tries to spin it.

  After being dragged up and down the internet over their comments, the group released a statement. “We always been about being original and staying true. Staying true to yourself goes a long way,” the note read. “We are all fans of Makonnen’s music and we wish he didn’t feel like he ever had to hide himself. We feel the world is fucked up that people feel like they have to hide and we’re asked to comment on someone’s sexuality.”

  They would go on to trip over themselves again for various reasons, but I get the sense that while they may not especially hate ILoveMakonnen or wish him harm because of his sexuality, they would rather not be associated with him all the same, so as not to invite any speculation about themselves.

  Some years later, ILoveMakonnen confirmed as much in an interview: “I haven’t had any vocal support from any of them. You know what I mean?… Just like, we accept you and we fuck with you still . . . Don’t think that it’s all good in the hood, because it’s still not until people can man up and face themselves. Then they could face me.”

  I feel bad for him. I feel bad for whoever comes after him. And the one after that. It’s going to take people a long time to see a gay man as the kind of rapper he wants to be seen as: a rapper that happens to be gay, not the gay rapper. It’s right on par with the goal of getting some men to see gay men as men. Any day now.

  In 2013, Talib Kweli did an interview with Mother Jones and was asked about the difficulties in a gay mainstream rapper fully breaking through. “There just needs to be a gay rapper—he doesn’t have to be flamboyant, just a rapper who identifies as gay—who’s better than everybody,” he explained.

  I don’t want to be the Sojourner Truth of gay rappers; I would have a much better time being the Slim Thug and Saweetie of them.

  “I feel if I lacked morals and had a harder face then rapping would be a lyrically promising career for me,” my ridiculous friend Corey told me. “We are all one face tattoo away from experiencing our own rap dreams.”

  I liked the idea of becoming a rapper because I can’t think of anything better than being paid handsomely to act like those niggas. I forgot I can’t be a nigga in hip-hop because I’m a faggot. That reminds me of all of the other rooms that I’ve been in where I’m paid faint praise before being told that despite all the positives going for me, I’m just not the right fit
for the position I know they associate more with straight men. It’s been relayed to me in reference to opportunities for my other, nonmusical dreams. Some make more effort than others to disguise their real grievances. My voice. My mannerisms. What they convey. It’s a recurring theme of checking too many boxes, but when the identities are separated, you are considered too much of one and not enough of the other.

  When I think of being a rapper that way, it all becomes a lot less fun. I already know what limitations are placed on me by virtue of existing. I don’t need it pouring into my fantasy life. It’s too bad, though. I am certain I would make a pretty solid rapper of so-so skill level that makes up for it thanks to ear, songwriting ability, and if all else fails, sympathy and payola.

  Too bad I’m too aware of all of the reasons it couldn’t work.

  This is what La must have meant about me being too smart to be a rapper, though I still swear that I’m ignorant enough to make it work if I ever got the chance.

  FLOAT ON

  His smile seemed to convey amusement but belied what was really behind it. His giddiness appeared to be sparked by the sight of me—me, reflecting an image he was routinely accused of presenting. The one he loathed with great vigor but was guilty of exhibiting each and every single time he was called on it. In the moments after he watched me hop out of Kim’s car and walk back into the house, he caught the glaze in my eyes, and responded with a smile that frustrated me. He knew. He could tell. I never wanted to give him that satisfaction.

  I was back in Houston for the second time when it happened.