When this grand 24SevenCities adventure was starting up, one of the pleasures was reconnecting with my fellow Sound editor Jerome Spencer, whom I met through an accusatory blog entry and eventually came to enjoy working under at the late, lamented Relative Theory Records. We’re both hip hop inclined gentlemen who’ve had to question our disinterest and occasional disgust with the form as we’ve found our respective ears tempted by different mistresses. We identified a big problem in how commercial hip hop refuses to grow as we do.

Not that I’m mature or anything. My finances are a mess and my ability to handle personal relationships and balance them with practical concerns has deteriorated if anything over the last decade or so. In that same time, however, even though I’ve grown less futilely contrarian and less concerned with broad political thought, I’ve also become less patient with what I inherently feel to be morally wrong. In high school, I clung to remnants of classic insecure straight male homophobia, as is the fashion at that age. In college, I steadily worked to strip my mind of such prejudice, but in a self-congratulatory way that wasn’t quite right either. Now, as an “adult,” I’m kind of disgusted to see homophobia persist in any form as an acceptable point of view.

It gets problematic with hip hop. So often, artists will be well on their way to making a great piece of work. Nice beats, clever wordplay, and then some random gay bashing just comes in and totally mucks up the vibe. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I figure some male ejaculate might actually taste better and help wash some of this ignorance out.

I talked with Jerome quite a bit about the odd and off-putting tolerance for intolerance in hip hop in this matter and we talked about writing about it. We even started making up a fantasy list of rappers most likely in the closet (and believe me it is a long list). Unfortunately, AV Club beat us to the punch, though there’s still plenty to explore. Click here to read Nathan Rabin getting disillusioned by one of his favorites disappointing him with an out of nowhere homophobic manifesto.