From House to Hip-Hop
by Czarina Mirani | Published April 2006 | Features Archives
I MAKE NO secret that my favorite House nights of the week are those with a predominantly black gay crowd. These environments not only have the best music, but also allow me to be most free to express myself. Yet the one thing any of these nights have in common is that hip-hop is always lurking in the corner, waiting to overtake the House later that night.
It's been said that House music was raised and nurtured by gay black men. Ten years ago House music reigned supreme in black gay nightlife, but today it seems like nothing more than a relic of the past. Go to any night aimed at the black gay community, and you will see that it is hip-hop that is the main attraction. Even at some established clubs known for phenomenal House music, House music has taken a back seat to commercial hip-hop. This is not a condemnation of the hip-hop genre but rather a concern that House is losing its footing in the gay community.
I spoke with three promoters that have popular gay nights in the city: Bob Yeaworth, Dana Powell and DJ Stoney. Bob Yeaworth does the OTDL (On the Down Low) parties Sunday nights at the Generator. Dana Powell is not only the manager of the Generator but also DJs and promotes the House sets on Saturdays, and DJ Stoney throws the Earotic parties three Saturdays a month at Spin. And although all three men proclaim House as their first love, they see that the new generation of black gay men is having them push that love to the back burner, making hip-hop the star of their nights.
"We started the Earotic party in 2003 and tried to give people a little of everything. We started noticing people standing around waiting for the hip-hop to start," says Stoney. "Before you know it we only played the first hour of House music." The same thing can be said of Bob's OTDL parties, where the highlight of the night comes when the R&B-House vibe is replaced with top 40 hip-hop.
"I was living in Puerto Rico, and all of a sudden I came back to Chicago in 2002 and it was all hip-hop," Bob says. The Generator on Saturdays plays House until 2am, and the shift in the crowd dynamics is nothing short of spectacular: the moment that hip-hop comes on, the whole place is bumrushed and the energy level goes up a hundred-fold. Where House music was once the main attraction, it has now been relegated to that of a weak opening act.
With radio and videos influencing the younger generation as to what is cool, who is to say the gay market is not as influenced just as much, if not more so? "I think that the media in general is forcing hip-hop culture down everybody's throats, minds and ears and that they just follow" Stoney says.
"The media is driving the taste of the gay market and the kids want to hear all the stuff they hear on WGCI and even B96," Bob says. How can we expect the younger clubgoing crowd to accept and appreciate music that they don't even have access to? At least in the early '90s, we had the radio stations playing songs by CeCe Penniston, Crystal Waters, Barbara Tucker and Deee-Lite. Today we'd be lucky if we can pinpoint a House artist that gets any kind of airplay. And without any radio or video exposure, how can we expect them to embrace House at a club?
Although Dana also blames radio, he feels DJs have a major role in it too. "The market is flooded with hip-hop. The younger kids have no other alternative. This is what they grew up with and this is all they know. But we have to fault the DJs as well. One of the things most DJs find is that hip-hop is the easiest thing and so I'll play it. 'It doesn't matter if I'm proficient with it, it doesn't matter if I'm going to deliver it correctly. I'm going to take these two Top 10 records and slam them together and everyone's comfortable with it, everyone knows it so it's no work for me.'"
A very important factor in the legacy of gay culture is the ball scene. If you have seen the popular early '80s film called Paris is Burning, then you know there are entire events catered around the different gay "houses". They compete in categories ranging from runway modeling, face and vogueing, to name a few. The House music played at balls is often called "ball House," categorized by hard, tracky, percussive beats. Among the black gay youth, this is sometimes all they know of House music.
A lot of the kids that come out of these balls can be extremely flamboyant and uber-feminine. And therein lies the conflict of musical preference and identity. With the advent of the "homothug" or the "dl" boys, a lot of the younger gay kids don't want to be associated with femininity. "There's a perception in the market that House music is either for older gay men that grew up with it in the '90s or that it's for the young sissies. They see it as feminine," Bob says. Aided by the hyper-masculinity of hip-hop culture, black gay identity in the '90s moved away from House music and instead created the "homothug" or the "dl" brother. So now we've come to this point, where mainstream black gay male identity embraces a popular music and culture that often seems inconsistent with homosexuality. After all, the lyrics in many a hip-hop song have been anything but ambiguous on queer status. But to them in doesn't matter, because it gives them a chance to identify with media images deemed as popular, while at the same time keeping away the stigma of being too girly. The irony is that the earliest disco clubs in the '70s were often a shelter to this community from social reprisals, where they were able to express their sexuality as openly and as freely as they wished.
Thirty years later if you were to observe a typical gay night at the club, you would notice two factions: the "straight" looking boys, and the more elaborate and ostentatious ball kids. House music becomes categorized with the latter, and so the harder acting boys disassociate from what them deem as soft and effeminate music.
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