ROUGH DIAMOND COLLECTIVE

Both of you have art and performance backgrounds, and I’m curious to know what you feel that’s given you in terms of your performance? For example, “Ima Read,” you’ll take that song and perform it 3 or 4 different ways.

Njena: I spent a good part of my time in art school re-creating rap music videos, where I’d make all-paper backdrops, and I’d perform in these crocheted full-bodied monster costumes. And that was fun, being able to do whatever because you’re performing behind a costume, behind a mask. And then I also did some public performances, but still masked by that suit, so this is very different in the way that it’s just me. So I’ve been getting a lot of direction in that from Ojay, who has a very strong performance background.

Zebra: At Southby I think we tailored each performance to fit the crowd and the audience so they could get the best experience we had to offer. If it was a sidewalk performance we wanted it to be playful, and we wanted them to feel engaged and feel that they could come up and give us a high five and pat us on the back. When we did the Beauty Bar show I wanted it to be high-drama, it was our last show, I had already begun losing my voice, so I had a lot to make up for. It was drama, it was yelling, it was sweating, I was drenched by the end of the show because I want them to feel the energy. I want them to get every lyric and I want them to see how that transforms and transitions from a studio recording to a live show.

Njena: And a lot of it was improv too. We depend on the audience getting into for us to continue moving forward, for us to even know what to do next because if they’re not into it it’s like, “Oh, you’re not into it, watch this” and if they are into it’s like “interact with us, give me something, let me bounce off of you.” People really enjoy that. It’s fun for us, it’s fun for them, and something new happens every time we perform because of that.

Zebra: I mean, having a performance and cultural studies background I’m inspired by great performers like Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, Andre 3000, people who put on these great shows and leave people wanting to come back and see what they’re going to do next. And I just hope to fall in the footsteps of legends who are putting on incredible shows and making moments, opposed to just a catchy song or something that is flat. I want there to be depth in performance, and characters, and what people have to present to an audience today.

And just as there’s the worry that hip-hop will shut out rappers because they’re gay, there’s perhaps an equally legitimate concern that audiences will fetishize them and pit them against one another for the same reasons. “Let’s not make gay NYC rap a ‘thing,’” Le1f wrote me in an email after our interview. “I’m not trying to be competing with my friends based on their race and sexuality. The whole ‘room for one’ mentality is homophobic… if the world is ready for a gay rapper, then they’re ready for multiple gay rappers. If we were straight, no one would be comparing us.”

The story of DDm, gay MC, though, begins at a Red Maple rap battle in March 2010—more than a year before his coming out.

That night, he went up against A-Class, one of the city’s most respected and relentless battle rappers. In the first round, DDm, whose sexual orientation was speculated upon by many in the Baltimore rap world, hurled this at A-Class: “When I come hard, you know that it’s over, I got Vaseline motherfucker, bend over.”

“I knew he was gonna try to call me a faggie,” DDm recalls, unimpressed, “so I was gonna try to take the power out of that.” A-Class took the bait, calling him a “faggot” as soon as it was his turn to respond. In the next round, DDm rhymed an arch love letter to A-Class. After that, the usually whip-smart rapper’s comebacks just weren’t hitting like they should. A-Class lost the battle.

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