AfterElton.com - Gay Hip-Hop Takes Off (page 3)

Gay Hip-Hop Takes Off (page 3)
by Robert Urban, February 8, 2005

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Dutchboy offered me my first real introduction to gay rap while I worked as sound engineer on his Rainbow Flava-Family Business (2001) CD. With an all-GLBT cast, this third album by the pioneering San Francisco-based group was the first hip-hop project to represent the entire queer community. It features MC performances by Dutchboy, N.I.Double-K.I. and PointFiveFag; guest appearances by D/DC, Miss Money, and Shante Smalls; and production work by Jeffrey “Dub” Mann, Archie Smooth, DJ Monkey and Tori Fixx.

By being on-hand in the recording studio during Dutchboy’s many vocal takes and overdubs, I got a chance not only to observe a great rapper at work, but also to digest his intricate word-maps and complex ideas. The man is wholeheartedly in love with hip-hop, inner-city and African American culture. Every nuance of speech, every turn of a phrase and pitch of a voice, every breath between words--all the things that make up the characters in his world are painstakingly rehearsed until perfect.

Dutchboy displays a phenomenal talent for vocal mimicry and impersonation. He’s able to create a different vocal personality to express each new tangent of thought he tackles, be it youth suicide, AIDS, repressive anti-gay laws, third world sexual politics, religion-based persecution of gays, bi-inclusiveness, co-gender inclusiveness, multiracial inclusiveness or society’s view of rap itself.

And now, fresh outta New York City via Seattle, WA, with the freshest face on the U.S. gay hip-hop scene today, is young soce (pronounced “so-say,” and always written in lower case).

soce (a.k.a. Andrew Singer) describes himself thus: “I am a rapper. My official title is Jewish, Gay White MC. I am the hip-hop Spellcaster…the Elemental Wizard. I am the male Lil Kim and the white Eminem. I make beats, I play violin, piano, I sing, I do it all, baby!!!”

And so he does. Soce can boast of two CDs, I’m in My Own World (2004) and Dream Da La Dream (2003), plus three film documentaries that feature him, and his own animated music video. He offers up hot, melodic sounds mixed with street sensibility and humor, plus a dash of something completely unexpected in rap--passionate homosexuality and a winning smile. Once they get over the shock, listeners grasp that he’s also layin’ down some seriously tight joints. Soce often works in partnership with female, Jewish, gay, white Wisconsin MC God-Des, and Brooklyn, NY-based bi porn electro rap star Houston Bernard.

My own first time at seeing and hearing soce was a stunner. At a show in NYC he swaggered out onstage and burst into a disarming, irresistible rendition of his infectious gay rap anthem “I Am So Gay.” This crowd-pleaser’s fun gimmick of alternating between lurid verses and a silly, no-brainer refrain had the audience of mostly white gay men & lesbians (not exactly your typical call-and-response gangsta crowd) chanting his hooks aloud with complete abandon.

As with “I Am So Gay,” many of soce’s rap tunes feature simple, cute choruses. As he says, “It’s way more fun if everyone sings along.” Yet soce can also display a serious side to his easy rhymes, as in his song “Feels Good (Dirty)”

With his charming goofiness, onstage charisma and uncanny aura of comfortableness – soce is poised to become the nasty good-will ambassador of gay white rappers to audiences everywhere.