Terrance Dean withholds names in his new book, ‘Hiding in Hip Hop,’ but offers an inside look into hip hop’s gay underworld. (Photo courtesy Simon & Schuster)
Out of ‘Hiding’ Former MTV entertainment executive opens the door to hip hop’s gay underground
Hip hop isn’t known for fostering romance and love, and for gay men and lesbians who are part of one of the world’s most popular music genres, finding a significant other can feel impossible.
It’s hard to have gay relationships in a world where there are no gay people, at least outside the bedroom. Of course, there are gay people throughout the hip-hop industry, and next week the public gets an insider’s look into some of the bedrooms in which they exist.
“It’s very difficult to date someone in this industry who is living on the down low because you have to become second or third in their life,” says Terrance Dean, a former MTV entertainment executive and author of the new book “Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry — From Music to Hollywood.”
The book, which comes out May 13, is garnering widespread buzz even in pre-release.
“Their career comes first, if they’re with a woman, their wife or girlfriend comes next, and then, maybe, then there’s you,” Dean, 39, says. “And you have to know how to play your role, and how you fit in. You cannot openly express how you feel, no open displays of affection, and you’re always in the background.
“The world is always about lies and deception, and if you’re with someone who is willing to lie and deceive other people, what makes you think they won’t lie and deceive you?” he continues. “As much as I wanted to be in relationship, and be intimate one-on-one with a man in the industry, I realized until I was honest and truthful with myself, I couldn’t be honest and truthful with another man, and neither could he.”
DEAN KNEW HE WAS ATTRACTED TO other men by the time he graduated from Fisk University in 1992. From his Pentecostal upbringing to the sexual abuse he endured as a teenager, Dean learned that same-sex desires were sinful and unspeakable, lessons reinforced as he tried to break into the music and movie business after graduating.
“I never thought there were guys like me in the entertainment industry because I never noticed obviously gay men, gay black men — white gay men, yes,” he says.
After interning at CNN and landing an entry-level job at the Apollo Theater, Dean was hired as a production assistant for the movies “North” and “Crooklyn.” It was a member of the mostly black crew on the Spike Lee film that gave Dean his first glimpse into the secret subculture that existed for black men who wanted to be with other men.
“There was just this connection that we had, certain things we said, and he noticed —” Dean says, his voice trailing off as he struggles to articulate the unspoken exchanges that have taken place between men across ages.
“I don’t know, it was just something we just knew, we could identify with each other, the conversations we had,” he says. “He invited me over to his house, introduced me to other friends of his who were in the entertainment industry, and that was my first introduction to, ‘Oh, there are men like me, but we have to be quiet about our sexuality.’”
Dean dipped his toes into the underground gay scene in New York’s entertainment industry, but he was overwhelmed by what awaited when he moved to Los Angeles to take production jobs with “The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show” and Russell Simmon’s “Def Comedy Jam.”
“These were people I put on a pedestal, and I never would have assumed would be gay,” Dean says of some of the stars he met at discreet gay gatherings. “And being at this event or function with them, and around them, I was like, wow, this is really much bigger than I thought it was.”
Like anyone being considered for membership into an underground society, Dean was secretly vetted by someone in L.A.’s down low scene who believed he was a like-minded individual.
“It’s like having a sponsor when you enter a crew,” Dean says. “I hung out with him for months before he took me to my first DL party. When he took me to the party, it was like he was introducing me, saying, ‘He’s cool. I know him, and I’m personally vouching for him.’”
Despite widespread anticipation of a book that exposes the underground queens of hip hop, Dean stays loyal to his fraternity and doesn’t drop any names in “Hiding in Hip Hop.”
“The reason I don’t name names is because this book is not about them, and I’m not trying to out people,” he says. “This is my memoir, it’s about my experience.”
DEAN’S SEXUAL EXPERIENCE WITH MEN began when he was in high school, and raped by a neighbor who was watching Dean and his cousin. Traumatized, Dean dealt with his pain and fear in silence.
“I never said anything because I knew it was wrong,” Dean says. “The second time it happened, I was like, this is so inappropriate, and what does this say about me? Why is he attracted to me? What did I do to cause this?”
After the second incident, Dean told his family, but feared that news about the sexual abuse had raced through his Detroit neighborhood and everyone now considered him gay. Dean himself began to question his sexual orientation, until he struck up a close friendship with a cute, popular boy at his high school.
“I just noticed I had the biggest crush on him, and I was like, OK, it’s official,” he says.
Dean continued sleeping with women throughout college and his early career with the hopes that his homosexual feelings would fade. But soon, Dean was part of a hedonistic subculture that existed largely at sex parties, which Dean doesn’t shy away from in his book.
“That was normal for me because I knew we couldn’t be public about our relationships, we couldn’t be public about our sexuality, so behind closed doors was the only place we could get together,” says Dean, who recalls seeing more than one rapper in a compromising position at a sex party.
“People who are very open and very unafraid to be sexual in an open environment, and we were in a space where we could be like that because we all knew the discretion we had to keep,” he says.
AFTER WORKING AS A PRODUCTION MANAGER for MTV’s special events division, Dean left the entertainment industry in 2002 to begin writing, lecturing and focusing on his philanthropic efforts to uplift men of color.
When hip hop artists rap about bitches and faggots, it feeds their hyper-masculinity in the same way as being surrounded by half-naked women, wearing oversized gold chains, or mean-mugging for the camera, Dean says.
“We grow up thinking, oh, that’s what it’s like to be a man,” Dean says. “But masculinity is not based on how many women you’re fucking, or how
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