♫ I'm your daddy mac snickerdoodle baby-boo honey ♫

- I'm gonna say it again.

When I started doing music, it wasn't, I didn't set out to rap.

Even my producer at that time, he said,

"You need to spit real 'bout your life, who you are."

And so I came out to him, I'm like,

“What do you—I'm gay, what if I spit about that?"

He's said, “Well, then do it, that's what you gotta do."

I'm Joey Lemar AKA Deadlee, and I'm a rapper.

Oh, and I'm gay.

(laughs)

♫ So baby, baby, I'm yours, dirty habits, foul moods ♫

Back in early 2000 when I started doing this stuff,

no one had ever seen an open gay rapper.

To them, it was only supposed to be like a masculine guy

that's doing it and spitting about chicks.

But I was taking it further back with my rap,

I mean I was thinking more about Public Enemy,

I was a big fan of Rage Against the Machine,

I mean, they can make change with their music,

so that's kinda what I was doing, too.

My early fans were not the people who I expected.

I thought it was gonna be hip-hop heads,

be brown and black men, but it wasn't that.

And it kinda made me mad because, you know, I really wanted

my brown and black people to love me and like

what I was doing, but I was dealing with a lot of people

that were down-low, and they had to, 'cause that's

just the way that we were brought up, and the culture.

♫ They say for better, for worse, so baby, baby, I'm yours

♫ Dirty habits, foul moods, but we keep it on course ♫

When I first came out, too, I thought I was gonna get

a lot of love from the gay community,

and it was the hardest thing to crack.

And even the festivals, I tried to play Long Beach,

tried to play LA Pride, and every time they're like,

"You're a little too hardcore,

"we don't want that element here."

And I'm like, "But I'm gay, what

"element are you talking about?"

They don't understand that there's

gay fools that look like me.

And we're not gonna go cause problems, man,

it's just this is the way we look.

Did I tell you it's a love song, though?

(laughs)

It's a gay love song.

Like you said, I'm sweet, man.

(laughs)

You know what, I think it just takes time,

you need to talk to people and people need

to look beyond the surface, man.

And I'm guilty of that too, man, y'know,

I think we're all guilty, it's just human nature, man.

I think we all wanna put everyone in a box.

And what's cool now, too, is like,

dude, they're not looking at me as the gay rapper,

they're not tripping on the whole gay thing.

I'm just doing music.