The phrase "No Homo" is an old phrase from about 5 years ago that is making appearances all over the blogosphere right now. I would like to take this opportunity to take advantage of this discourse around "No Homo" to extend it to a larger discussions of homophobia in hip-hop and in US pop culture at large.

So I want to first start out by saying that "No Homo" is not the first and probably not the last dig at homosexuals in hip-hop culture. According to Slate:

No homo, to those unfamiliar with the term, is a phrase added to statements in order to rid them of possible homosexual double-entendre. ("You've got beautiful balls," you tell your friend at the bocce game—"no homo.") No homo began life as East Harlem slang in the early '90s, and in the early aughts it entered the hip-hop lexicon via the Harlem rapper Cam'ron and his Diplomats crew. Lil Wayne brought the term into the mainstream, sprinkling "no homo" caveats across cameos, mix tapes, and his Tha Carter III LP, which was 2008's best-selling album. (Jay-Z has used the word pause in a similar way. 

Homophobia is often based on a sense of insecurity about one’s own masculinity—an insecurity heightened by the limited ways in which men and boys can express themselves through traditional notions of masculinity. . Jelani Cobb explains, “It’s calling your manhood into question… it’s calling your sexuality into question … it’s saying that if you are not this you must therefore be gay, you must be a gay, you must be a fa***t, you know, you must be a b**ch ni**a.”

Yet homophobia, homoeroticism and hypermasculinity often go hand in hand. In hip-hop, for instance, images of thugged out, hypermasculine men of color—posing shirtless, greased up, muscular—decorate magazine and album covers. While these images might not have been created as explicitly homoerotic, hypermasculinity in hip-hop, sports and fraternity cultures serve to bond men together, often at the expense of women, gays and men who do not meet strict gender-based roles and expectations.

Since the 1990's, Jamaican artists like Beenie Man, Tok and Buju Banton have released hit tunes with lyrics that, in addition to being blatantly anti-gay, also advise, and even instruct, listeners to kill gays. Another popular Jamaican artist, Elephant Man, declares in song, "When you hear a lesbian getting raped/ It's not our fault ... Two women in bed/ That's two Sodomites who should be dead." Another artist, Bounty Killer, beseeches listeners to burn "Mister Fa**ty" and make him "wince in agony."