Tank Talks About Those Claims That He Is Gay And Wonders Why Black People Demonize Homosexuality

Back in 2017, singer Tank made headlines when he appeared to say, at a concert, that he’d been “sucking dicks”. He clarified what he actually said during a The Breakfast Club interview with Charlamagne Tha God and Angela Yee.

Then in 2019, during another discussion with Angela Yee on her Lip Service podcast, the When We crooner suggested that men should be allowed to explore their sexuality. He said that men should be able to try out sexual relationships with other men without being labeled as gay, explaining that a man engaging in oral sex with another man could simply be exploration and not a definitive statement about his sexuality.

This was all hypothetically speaking, of course, but people ran with his words, hitting the singer with fresh gay rumours, interpreting his statement to be his tacit admission of his attraction to men.

Recently, in an interview with Leah A. Henry on her Lemonade show, Tank not only refuted, once again, the claims that he is gay, but he also spoke about Black people and their propensity for demonizing homosexuality.

While recounting the furor surrounding his past comments, he said, “I think my biggest problem with that was that, for people who didn’t understand what I was saying, they said, ‘Well, since I don’t understand it and I don’t like what he’s saying, then Tank is gay.’ And I’m like what? How did we start talking about me? what are we talking about? It went from having a hypothetical conversation about somebody else turning around to: ‘Tank is gay.’ What?! ‘Tank said he did it twice.’ What?!”

He went on to talk about how he was on Baller Alert where his picture had been posted, and he saw comments disparaging him over his supposed sexuality.

“They posted a picture of me and all these people were like, ‘Oh no, he’s gay, girl, leave him alone,” he said, expressing his disappointment when he noticed that the commenters were Black people.

“These are all Black people, for no good reason, just trying to tear another Black man down. They’re not trying to acknowledge a sense of sexuality to build me up,” he said. “They’re trying to use it 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, to keep them from buying my music. And I think that’s sad that we do that.”

He also talked about being prepared for this downside to celebrity by his friend, Jamie Foxx.

“And Jamie 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.’”

He clarified that he loves “gay people but I’m not gay. I don’t have a problem with gay people. I performed at Gay Pride. I hate to use the word ‘gay’. I love to categorize everybody as human beings. And those are people who have supported me. Those are fans. I went to perform for my fans. I always show up for whoever it is.”

He added, “It’s more sad than anything that they won’t stop pushing. They want it to be something negative.”

Leah Henry pointed out that the bigger issue is that these people are attempting to use sexuality – homosexuality specifically – as a weapon. If Tank were gay, what would it matter?

Tank agreed: “Why are you trying to weaponize it? Why are you trying to use it as something that should completely annihilate me from the musical universe or from earth itself? Why are you doing that? And why is it our people? Why? That’s all I’m asking. Why?”

He goes on to say, “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 who look like me, who come from where I come from, that they got a shot. That they 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 gonna to let that happen. I would never let that happen. But I am going to acknowledge it and call people on their bullshit. Hopefully people can accept that, as they choose to be opinionated and lie on my name, hopefully they can accept the truth that comes back with it, cos I’m always telling my truth.”

You can watch the full interview in the video below, the conversation about sexuality starts from the 19:03 mark.