Asanni Armon: Okay. So let's start with the basics. Tell us who you are and where you're from.
Matthew Thompson: So, my name is Matthew Thompson. I'm known as MattMatt. If you've been fucking with me since 2020, you might know me as MattMatt Raybeam. Or you will know me as MattMatt Raybeam. I am a poet who writes, speaks, and performs from the heart. And I'm from Bedford Heights, Ohio, over on Lake Erie near Cleveland.
AA: And you recorded some of this project in Ohio, but you also recorded in different parts of the US, New York as well as—correct me if I'm wrong, but Texas?
MT: So yeah, part of it, I started recording it here. I started recording it in Cleveland.I finished recording it in Houston, Texas. I recorded part of it in LA and part of it in New York.
I would say the ceiling of the idea for Faggot Radio started in New York when I was just working as a poet there and had started doing stand-up comedy like the “Live at the Pit” track in NYC. Like I did that at the People's Improv Theater. So some of the ideas started germinating in New York. And then when I got here during lockdown, just being in lockdown, I got to work. You know, stages were closed. We couldn't go nowhere. But I still had that itch to perform and to write. So yeah, Faggot Radio is like my pandemic project.
AA: Got it. Let's dive right in. So what was the significance of dropping listeners into a radio station from the jump? We hear, you know, the radio clicks tuning from one place to the next.
MT: So, I grew up listening to radio theater—my mom was listening to Shakespeare on the radio or like, you know, we have Cleveland Playhouse here. So we would listen to those plays on the radio. And I love the impulse to make a conceptual project, like with your project Shapeshifter. So I knew I wanted it to be a concept album, a concept mixtape because that's what I love. That's the tradition that I grew up in and what made me fall in love with the album as a form, the mixtape as a form. And so the radio idea lent itself to that as a way to also hop around these ideas, but find that tether of cohesion as I theorized, as I shared these poems, as I shared these songs, but also, you know, weave in like Casey Gerald's voice, Gil Scott-Heron’s voice, XXXTentacion. So, the radio gave me a context to move between all these different frames of mind and different spaces theoretically and artistically.
AA: One of the things that stood out to me the most was, and I've always said this about rappers, I do think that there's a difference between a rapper and an artist. I think that not every rapper is an artist. And it's okay, because I don't think that all rappers need to aspire to be artists. But I think that the difference is the ability to make something cohesive, the ability to make something a holistic project that taps into a lot of things. And I thought that you did a really excellent job at doing that. I mean, from the jump, we're kind of thrown into this world, not only this radio station, but like, all these different artists across different mediums that are getting at the kind of central theses of this project. And I want to spend a little bit more time talking about the radio station, particularly the DJ slash interviewer.
MT: Yeah. DJ Sweet Snacks.
AA: Right, right. So to me, it was, it read a little bit as satirical and, not in a disrespectful way, but kind of almost caricature-ish. How do you think that moved the tape forward? Like, what purpose did that serve?
MT: So for me, with DJ Sweet Snacks, like I was saying, this is my pandemic project. So I'm in the house by myself with this laptop and at first just like a Zoom recorder in my bathroom, squatted next to the tub, trying to get these bars off. And it just became like an echo chamber of my own voice. So DJ Sweet Snacks became another voice on a project for me to be in conversation with, to flesh out the ideas, to also be that counterpoint, to be like, it is crazy that you said rappers are the world's most famous faggots. It's like, why did you say that? And then me being able to respond in real time.
Also knowing that me bringing the word faggot into hip hop, bringing it to music and like American literature would be controversial, would be troubling. And so let me add a voice of reason, because I know some niggas ain't listening to Faggot Radio just because it's called Faggot Radio. Some people that are listening are like, does he know how absurd this is? James Baldwin always talks about sitting down to write with the white man on your shoulder. I feel like as queer people, there's like a little—like my dad's voice, honestly—the straight man on my shoulder being like, make this make sense, son. Or like, you know, maybe you're taking this too far. So DJ Sweet Snacks became like a balancing act through that character, not to curtail the project, but to give the audience a wink wink to say: I know that this is as punk rock as it's coming across. I know that this is like kicking niggas in their teeth, you know what I'm saying? I know.
AA: And it kind of reminded me of something like the Breakfast Club, with an out gay interviewer.
MT: I mean, Charlamagne, what did Azealia Banks say? It's a bunch of straight faggots.
Charlamagne is a straight faggot for sure. Speaking of Azealia Banks, like, let's talk about it. When she's on the Breakfast Club and they're like, so you make music for the gays. And she's like, and what about it? And the room is just quiet because they're like, well, this is supposed to be the moment where we've challenged you and you're supposed to defend yourself.
I am aware of the potential audiences for this project. And I know that asking people to sit with, you know, 45 minutes of music with me on, with the ground being Black queer aesthetics and hip hop. I know that that is unfamiliar territory. So let me try to pad this record through a familiar production, you know, like whether it be the instrumentals, or just the style of how some of those records came in.
AA: Why was rap the necessary way to do this work?
MT: Because hip hop is the only musical form that I know could hold my experimentation with the word faggot. I also didn't want the record to get too sentimental. I knew with hip hop, I could put music to something where I could theorize, but I also could get into my lyricism, but it wouldn't have to be overly sympathetic. It can be like punk rock, rock and roll, and it can also be like, “Grindr Story.” One called “XXXTentacion was killed on my way to therapy” is on there. On a rap record, I could include both of those kinds of tracks.
AA: For those who haven’t listened, what do you mean when you say that the rapper experience is the faggot experience?
MT: I mean that rappers and Black queer people are closely tied through death and spectacle. There is a reluctance to acknowledge the humanity of Black queer people until we are a headline. And I would say, you know, when Meek Mill's like, being a rapper is the most dangerous job in America. That's also where he's getting at. He's like, these niggas is really dying over records. Pop girls ain't dying over records.
They make their songs. They do their arena tours. They go home. Most of these niggas is playing thousand people rooms and still dying over records. This ain't a 15,000 people crowd.
AA: Right.
MT: And so when I assert that, I'm also trying to intentionally undermine what people see as cultural difference and instead assert cultural sameness. There is a similarity in the cultural archetype of the rapper and of the Black queer person, you know, in this country. And so that's what I'm wanting to articulate with that phrase. How it makes you vulnerable. As a rapper, it's just a vulnerable position. And it's different from other performers and other performances.
For whatever reason, I think it's an anti-Black thing. But at least for them, it is a performance. Being a Black queer person walking to the store, or being Black and trans and walking to the bus, you pumping. That's not actually a performance. But why are the stakes so similar? Why is it so heated? And I don't know. I don't have that answer. But as a poet that's experimenting with language and as a Black queer artist who's having these experiences, too, like street harassment, job insecurity, people being like, oh, you're not making music. You're just being gay. Let's put this in a pressurized container and see what happens in this experiment. Does it work? Can we debate about it? Or is MattMatt just crazy as fuck? And I'm fine with any of it, but I'm trying to encourage conversation.
AA: I think that there's something to be said about that violence in particular and the righteous anger about said violence. I would like to hear more about what you think about that: how that righteous anger, that righteous violence, how spectacle can illuminate that, elucidate that, help to get your point across about that, and how important it is for Black cis straight rappers to point that violence out. And how their music is received versus when Black queer rappers are doing the same thing. Does that make sense?
MT: My issue with rap or my interest in rap is that rap is a spectacle of language. And so we are using language to, you know, share lyrics in the song, right?
But for the people listening, these are embodied performances. I think that the reluctance to really embrace gay rap, queer rap, whatever we're doing and identifying as Black queer aesthetics and hip hop, is that there is still a negative air around what it means to embody queerness, to embody faggotry.
Unless you're Jay-Z talking shit to Nas like you the “fag model in Carl Connie Esco ads” or you're Nas saying “Gay-Z at Caccafella Records” or you're Ice Cube fresh out of not fucking with NWA no more and you have a whole song called “No Vaseline.” And all of these are hits. I just named three hits. You know what I mean?
AA: And none of those over there were inappropriate. In fact, they were—
MT: They barred up.
AA: They actually were super appropriate, because how dare Nas disrespect Jay-Z, and how dare Jay-Z disrespect Nas, and how dare NWA fuck with Ice Cube like that.
MT: They barred up, though. The Guardian has articles on Tyler the Creator where they've counted how many times he’s said faggot in his career. And Tyler's on an arena tour right now. You know what I mean? It fucks with me that these niggas get a kind of license in the form that they did not create on their own. They get to share it with the language in ways that we don't. And I don't know if I'm answering your question directly enough, but…
AA: No, it is.
MT: Being a queer person in America is a spectacle. It's like…it's an endless performance. It's an endless spectacle. It is a thing, even if it's not a thing. What's a relaxed state of being for a black, queer, or trans person in this country? Where we get to just pop our shit, and we just pop our shit, and it doesn't have to be the standard bearer for anything. I'm just rapping. This is just a song. And so I am also fighting for that space. Like, I ain't trying to be an advocate. I'm a poet. I ain't trying to be an activist. But as Black queer people here in this country, there's a need for advocacy through our music still. Even if we just keep it in hip-hop, we still fighting for our spot in hip-hop. You know what I mean? Also, you know, I got two or three Essex Hemphill books on my table right now. Essex tells us in his book, Ceremonies, y’all can't keep running around New York and L.A. and being like, I can't go home because they're homophobic. Like, y'all gotta take y'all gay asses home and just make them deal with you. And so, for me, making Faggot Radio, I'm contending with the black church, too.
I remember I told my mom: Faggot Radio is a hip-hop project, but it's a gospel project, too. Like, it's multiple hymns on there. And I asked her, do you think it'll ever be accepted as that? And she was like, no. For me, Faggot Radio was my attempt to come home to the Black church to hip-hop and say, y'all gonna have to contend with me.
AA: You sample Casey Gerald talking about his mother on the tape, and it made me think about how families are supposed to teach us what love is. And they also teach us what love should not be and what it ain't. For better or for worse. And not to pathologize the Black family, but can you speak more to how family and the Black faggot kind of are at odds? There's a tension there.
MT: Shoutout to Casey Gerald because he low-key gave the thesis for the project. You know, either we all going to be faggots or none of us can be faggots.
Either we all going to be niggas or none of us can be niggas. I want the faggot experience as the rapper experience or faggots are the world's most famous faggots to be the thesis.
I remember when I came out, my dad was like, you don't got to tell people. Because what if you change your mind? You know, like, I'm like, I'm not going to change my mind. For me, I know, a lot of well-meaning Black parents just have that concern for safety.
I also was talking to my dad last night, and he was like, I've come a long way. I'm like, you really have come a long way. But his mindset was basically still: everyone doesn't need to know. Is the gays running up your streams? Like, maybe they're not. If they ain't putting no money in your pocket, then why is that your audience? He's thinking about it in multiple different ways that all come back to well-being, right? You have people who say that African Americans are the most homophobic community in the country. That shit ain't true. I think that African Americans are under the most persistent violence through anti-Blackness in this country. And so when Black families have Black queer children and other family members in their family, the fear does get doubled.
AA: To circle back just a little bit, one thing that did keep coming up in the project was sex and pleasure. Obviously, sex is integral to the majority of the world's understanding of what a faggot is. But, to me, when listening to the project a few times that I did, it seemed like you were coming back to sex for a few reasons, one of them being a way to escape or dull some of the pain that you were experiencing while also writing this tape. And so, one: is that
true? And then, also, why is it important to hone in on pleasure when we're talking about Black queer people and we're talking about pain and we're talking about suffering, all these things?
MT: I just can't escape my traditions. You know, Audre Lorde's essay, Uses of the Erotic, is where my essay on the uses of spectacle came from. And so I acknowledge the erotic as intelligence. I acknowledge the erotic as like, queer genius, as femme genius. The erotic isn't frivolous. The erotic is a technology. And so, when I'm coming back to the erotic in my raps, I'm also being like, all right, I'm off in my theoretical deep end. What did Lauryn Hill say? I add a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me? Let me put some language in here that evens the playing field of understanding. At the same time, what always bothered me is that for, like, the homophobic mindset, queerness is totally bound up in sex. It's not bound up in what queerness is actually cultivated out of, which is the way that we bring people together, being spiritual gatekeepers, being healers in the community, being—whether someone's a professional artist or not, having that sense of artistry in your lifestyle and way of being just as a queer person. And so, I'm always going to assert romance and the erotic in my work, because sensuality is key to my poetics. But, at the same time, I am, again, challenging people to open their mind to experiences that have been intentionally erased, exiled, alienated, suffocated, to say, like, this is okay. You know, it's like, there doesn't have to be, there doesn't have to be a point other than sex for a song. Sex is great material for a song.
AA: At one point, you say that you had to kill the God in your head. And I love that, because you say that and then you end both sides of the project with a hymn. What is that tension there for you?
MT: Growing up and being in church and listening to just a lot of homophobic sermons as a kid made me think that God was also homophobic or some type of queer antagonist. I’ve studied a bunch of religions, gone to a bunch of temples and mosques and different types of gatherings. At some point, I was like: I'm not a Christian, but I am a Christian.
I was raised Christian. I don't really know a spiritual practice without saying Amen at the end or needing to contend with Jesus Christ's contributions. And I had to get more comfortable with that because I'm not a Black queer person that's going to stay out of church or that's going to deny myself a proper burial because the people who raised me didn't have the language to rear me with the care I needed. And so when I say, I killed the God in my head, it's like, I killed the voice that I was raised with in my head that was saying that queerness was wrong. Part of the project was me doing some rewiring so that I could feel fulfilled in my spiritual practice.
AA: One of the things that came up a few times throughout the project was, alongside talking about the church and critiquing the church, you also critique liberalism and the Democratic Party, specifically. And I'm wondering about your thoughts on how liberalism and the Democratic Party contribute to the Black faggot suffering, like how you critique the Black church for perpetrating those harms.
MT: Yeah. Even when I say the rapper experience is a faggot experience, I'm talking about the violence and the conditions that produce both of those archetypes of the Black faggot and the Black rapper. The Democratic Party is a part of that anti-Black violence that we're experiencing. The root of that, for me, is their lack of acknowledgement on how conservative they actually are. They're not as forward-thinking as they position themselves, you know, as a kind of, like, flip-side to the Republican. Like, this isn't progressive. Obama ran on gay marriage is wrong. And then in the second term, the white gays turned up that pressure and turned down that funding. Then he started talking about, oh, I guess we could get this through.
AA: Gay is okay. Kind of, sort of. Kind of, sort of, but not really. Kind of, sort of, not really.
MT: It's just a mess. I'm interested in political honesty. And that is a conundrum as a phrase, “political honesty.” But it's dead-ass to me as a Black revolutionary. We don't ever shirk our position trying to align with folks for some bread. But the Democrats move their goal post whenever they need some bread. So no, I don't like how conservative the Democratic Party is. And how much they contribute to the anti-Black violence that we're experiencing. In professional spaces, on the street, in academic spaces.
AA: I think that one of the things that really stood out to me on the project was you said that you're not interested in identity, which to me is at odds with trying to collapse a term such as faggot, which we know, really, as an identifier at the very least. But most people would call it an identity.
MT: Call me out!
AA: Well, no, I don't think the intention is one that is contradictory. I think it just puts us more in a gray area. So what is at stake, though, for the average person to stop understanding faggot as just an identity when you're trying to get into something much deeper?
MT: I think what's at stake is a missed opportunity to strengthen our community and to strengthen our understanding of one another. Like, if you're going to flatten Black queer people into a flat archetype that is just like, people who be fucking around and who knows, do they got jobs? Who knows what they do? They just suck dick or whatever the fuck, right? Like, if that's going to be it, then we're going to be stunted as a community. Because as much as Essex is saying y'all got to go home, we also have to be embedded back. We also have to be included. We got to get the invite to the parties when y'all have the parties as well. And so for me, it's not an identity project so much as it’s me wanting to start a conversation, using pop poetics to start a conversation in our community and experimenting with language as a poet to start a conversation in our community to bring the community together. We're not in different communities. We are the same community. Ballroom and hip hop are the same tradition. I can understand why we're at different parties, but I am interested in us having more intermixed just because I feel like it would be a more poppin’ party.
AA: You're a rapper, but obviously you're much more, and the project showcases all of that. On the tape, you rap, you sing, you do spoken word. Multi-hyphenate, hyphenate, hyphenate, hyphenate, hyphenate! Why was it necessary to showcase all of these sides in your debut, and does that play into this idea of using spectacle to get this point across?
MT: I don't think the multidisciplinary nature was me getting at spectacle there, but I do believe being a poet for me is inherently multidisciplinary. Like, being a poet gave me the skills to start doing stand-up comedy. It gave me the skills to songwrite. It gave me the skills to make films.
And so, I mean, I do think, though, like, being a poet gave me the skill set and the tools to learn how to make a spectacle of language. Like, rap did that, but, like, the poets really did that for me. Um, which is why, you know, we were talking about the samples that almost made it but didn't, like, Toni Morrison, Danez, Essex, Marlon. They gave me insights into Black queer aesthetics to bring to Faggot Radio, and also gave me an insight on how to make spectacle useful. You watch Marlon Riggs' Black Is and Black Ain't, and he's passing from AIDS complications, making a film on some J Dilla Donuts shit before he passes. That gave me the tools to get to work, and also gave me the lineage so that I knew what I’m doing isn’t some unsubstantiated thing.
AA: Is there anything that you would like people to take away that wasn't covered already, that we haven't talked about already?
MT: The other day I was at my friend's house and I wrote, “MattMatt is my favorite poet on a scrap of paper.” As, like, a MattMatt was here tag. And that made me think, like, Faggot Radio is just another MattMatt was here tag. The project is to inspire conversation. It's to add to the archive of African American literature, hip hop, and Black music at large. I'm in this bitch, so what's up? It's funny because before we got on the call, my sister was like, have you ever thought about like releasing Faggot Radio under another name just so that people will get to hear the songs? I would never do that. Censoring the project would be a disservice to the tradition I'm proud of and to the project and to the work. That shit was hard. Writing all that shit, pulling the beats, getting it mixed, talking to the people, learning what a mix was. No, it is what it is.
AA: It'll get its legs, you know. It happens when it's supposed to and how it's supposed to, right? But it will.
MT: I'm sitting here with Essex Hemphill’s Ceremonies, and this book is out of print, right? And now they've compiled the poems from that into this book that recently came out because that book is out of print. And so what I know about when we add to the record is that art has its own life. And I'm not a capitalist, so I'm not out here like, but get the merch, but get the merch, run the streams, run the streams. Like that streaming farm shit is for them niggas that do that business. I'm an artist and a Black poet who has something to say.
