Opening The Closet Door: 8 Singers Who Had To Deal With Speculation About Their Sexuality

Me’Shell Ndegeocello

When it comes to your sexuality and the music industry there is always a battle. Many people in the LGBT community feel this way about R&B/Jazz singer Me’Shell Ndegeocello. The singer was the first female to be signed to Madonna’s Maverick music label and just 18 years old when she hit success with the Grammy-nominated single “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night).” With eight albums under her belt, she still hasn’t broken into the mainstream. Why? Because being labeled as a bi-sexual almost hurt her career. In an interview she did with AfterEllen.com, she said she felt that her sexuality was brought up more than her music was:

“I feel like my sexuality preceded my music for a long time. It was used as a marketing tool in the beginning, pretty blatantly, and I didn’t really get it at the time. I was just out. I didn’t realize it was a selling point and it took a lot of years to get any sense of privacy back into my life, where people didn’t feel entitled to talk to me about who I was having sex with, as if it weren’t a personal question.”