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A couple of years ago, R&B singer Tank made headlines when he suggested that men should be allowed to explore their sexuality. In a discussion with Angela Yee, Tank said that men should be able to try out sexual relationships with other men without being labeled as gay.
Essentially, he was saying that engaging in oral sex with another man could simply be exploration and not a definitive statement about one’s sexuality.
Tank was speaking hypothetically not about himself but people ran with his words and took it to be a statement of his own attraction to men. Not only did they do that, they’ve used the claim as an attempt to shame Tank.
Recently, in an interview with Leah A. Henry, Tank not only refuted, once again, the claims that he is gay, he also spoke about Black folks and our propensity to demonize homosexuality.
See what he had to say below.
“I think my biggest problem with that was for people who didn’t understand what I was saying, they went ‘Since I don’t understand what he’s saying and I don’t like what he’s saying then Tank is gay.’ I’m like what? How did we start talking about me? It went from having a hypothetical conversation about somebody else turning around to ‘Tank is gay. Tank said he did it twice.’ What?!
It’s crazy because I was on Baller Alert the other day. They posted a picture of me and all these women were like, ‘Oh no, he’s gay girl, leave him alone.’
These are all Black people, for no good reason, just trying to tear another Black man down. They’re not using a sense of sexuality to build me up. They’re trying to tear me down. They’re trying to use it as a means to deter people who had a certain fantasy about me, away from me, away from my music, to keep them from coming to my shows, from buying my music. And I think that’s sad that we do that.
And Jamie [Foxx] prepared me for this which is crazy. He said, ‘Listen, when you become successful, you’re going to be two things. You’re going to be gay and you’re going to be a sell out.’
And I said, ‘I’m not neither one of those things.’ I love gay people but I’m not gay. I performed at Gay Pride. I hate to use the word gay, I love to categorize people as human beings. And those are people who have supported me. I went to perform for my fans. I always show up for whoever it is.
And the fact that Jamie said this to me and I’m looking up years later and out of the blue…it would be hurtful if I paid it that much attention. But it’s more sad than anything. They won’t stop pushing. They want it to be something negative.
Leah Henry points out that the bigger issue is that they’re attempting to use sexuality, homosexuality specifically, as a weapon. If Tank were gay, what would it matter.
Tank said, “What would it matter? Why are you trying to weaponized it and use it as something that should completely annihilate me from the musical universe or from the world itself. Why are you doing that? And why is it our people? That’s all I’m asking. Why?
I show up for my people as often as I can. I try to represent in a way so that the little boys and girls that look like me, that come from where I come from have a shot. They can walk in the door knowing that the guy who walked in before them paved a way that was respectable and was built off of love.
It’s just the evil of it all doing its best to outshine the beauty of where we are and what we do. And I’m not going to let that happen. I would never let that happen. But I am going to acknowledge it and call people on their bullsh*t.
Hopefully people can accept that as they choose to lie on my name.”
You can watch the full interview in the video below.
