Mister Cee in the new issue of GQ magazine
Mister Cee and Ebro Darden in the new issue of GQ magazine
As if he had any demons left to exorcise, Mister Cee opens up in a new interview with GQ's Zach Baron, a conversation which anchors a feature-length profile on the Hot97 mixshow jock in the newest issue of the mens' magazine. Filling in a lot of the drama that has already played out on the air (and now archived on youtube and soundcloud for the reference of listeners both prurient and professorial) the piece nevertheless goes deeper than a any radio interview could in painting a portrait of the the legendary but troubled DJ--and the solitary existence he was leading as the scandal played out on the radio and internet (at one point, Cee claims he was drowning his sorrows in so much binge-drinking of sugary soda that diabetes started to affect his eyesight).
What comes across clearest however, is a certain lack of clarity. Specifically, Cee maintains--as he has throughout his trials and tribulations--that his solicitation of transgender prostitutes for fellatio does not make him gay. This is a point that seems too ambiguous for many to process, not least among them Hot97 program manager Ebro Darden (both in his on-air conversation with Cee and in my Ebro interview here on Okayplayer); that gay identity seems to imply a certain vulnerability or loss of power that Cee simply won't cop to. I include below a transcription of my exchange with Ebro on this point, as well as two eloquent excerpts from Baron's piece which unerringly capture the ambivalence about sexual power roles right at the heart of hip-hop:
OKP: Cee makes a point of stating...that this behavior is not gay. And it strikes me that within a certain community, there is a code that says same sex relations are not gay...as long as you're on top. Have you ever encountered that attitude?Ebro Darden: I don't know nothin' about that...that sounds crazy.
>>>Hear The Full Okayplayer Interview with Ebro Darden
There are some uneasy moments now, sure. One recent Friday evening he played Buju Banton's “Boom Bye Bye” on air—a song about murdering gay men. Hip-hop has largely embraced Cee, at least publicly, but some behave differently behind closed doors. “I do understand Cee's fear, and I'll never say the rappers' names,” Flex says, but “my relationship has changed with a few rappers.” Hot 97 still routinely spins the North Carolina artist J. Cole, who on his last album rapped: The same reason they call Mister Cee “the Finisher” / Forbidden fruit, watch for the Adam's apple! (Cee: “J. Cole, if you're reading this: I have forgiven you for the ‘Forbidden Fruit’ line, and we can move on.”) He remains one of the foremost boosters of a genre that can still sometimes sound as confused about its attitudes toward gay men and women as Cee is himself....
...One by one, he apologized to the other women in his life—friends and those who were maybe something more. Most understood. Some were even attracted by it—the radio interviews, especially the tearful second one, made him famous, or more famous than he already had been. But the truth is, “at this point in my life, I can't even begin to try to be in a serious relationship with a woman. That's the point that I'm at now: What do I want? Where am I at? Now that it's out in the open—everybody knows, I know—where am I going from here?”
He knows the illegal activity needs to stop—“If I get arrested right now for that same type of activity, I'm doing sixty days in jail, hands down, done”—and that he could lose his job if he gets caught again.
So he's trying to figure it out, though to hear him talk, he hasn't figured it out at all, really. When I ask point-blank if he's gay, he says, “Absolutely not. And it's nothing—it's no offense to transgender women, but I only get with transgender women for one thing and one thing only, and that's for oral sex. Like I said: I never had sex with a man. I never had sex with a transgender woman.”
So he's come a long way, and now he's nowhere.
