Rapper A$AP Rocky, born Rakim Mayers in
Harlem, believes hip-hop's “gay thing” is crazy.
The 24-year old member of the hip hop
collective A$AP Mob appears on the cover of the April issue of
Interview.
“I came up in a world that was just
crazy – and it was hectic and kind of radical at the same time,”
Rocky
told designer Alexander Wang. “For me, growing up in Harlem
and then migrating down to SoHo and the lower East Side and chillin'
down there and making that my stomping ground … That was a big
thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also
more open-minded.”
“So now that I'm here and I've got a
microphone in my hand and about 6,000 people watching me, I need to
tell them how I feel.”
“For instance, one big issue in
hip-hop is the gay thing. It's 2013, and it's a shame that, to this
day, that topic still gets people all excited. It's crazy. And it
makes me upset that this topic even matters when it comes to hip-hop,
because it makes it seem like everybody in hip-hop is small-minded or
stupid – and that's not the case.”
“We got people like Jay-Z. We've got
people like Kanye. We've got people like me. We're all prime
examples of people who don't think like that. I treat everybody
equal, and so I want to be sure that my listeners and my followers do
the same if they're gonna represent me. And if I'm gonna represent
them, then I also want to do it in a good way.”