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SPEAKER 1: Maybe it's the anti-gay lyrics or the value placed on machismo, but hip hop has never been considered a supportive scene for homosexuality. Still, Minneapolis artist Kevin Moore is convinced there's plenty of room behind the mic for him and other gay rappers. Nikki Tundel reports.

NIKKI TUNDEL: On the outside, he's covered in tribal tattoos. But inside, rapper Kevin Moore admits he's all butterflies.

KEVIN MOORE: I always get nervous. I feel everything in my stomach. I'm a Virgo, so I'm a very stomach-oriented person.

NIKKI TUNDEL: He'll take the stage in about an hour. But right now, the 35-year-old is pacing back and forth in front of Honey, the Minneapolis nightclub. Moore is an African American actor, playwright, spoken word champ, and HIV educator, but he's best known as hip hop artist Kaoz. That's K-A-O-Z.

KEVIN MOORE: I felt that everything that I wrote was disruption of order. Everything I wrote was chaotic.

NIKKI TUNDEL: As Kaoz, his goal has always been to speak the truth, addressing everything from poverty to racism. Yet for years, there was one topic that never made its way to the mic.

KEVIN MOORE: The whole gay thing--

NIKKI TUNDEL: Worried about how his homosexuality would play out in the hyper masculine world of hip hop, Moore decided to keep his own reality out of his rhymes. Eventually, the pretense began to wear him down. And one day, he just stepped into the role of openly gay rapper.

KEVIN MOORE: I never actually said, hey, friends, family, Romans, countrymen, I'm Kevin Moore, and I'm gay. Hear me roar. I'm here. Woo! Shimmy, shimmy! None of that.

NIKKI TUNDEL: He simply started working himself into his writing.

SPEAKER 2: Let's make it happen. Kaoz everybody.

NIKKI TUNDEL: On this summer night, the Cleveland native is performing at a benefit for chemical dependency awareness.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Yeah. Hey. 20 years ago, a friend of mine told me that boy, how do you [INAUDIBLE].

But I was writing fire in the scenes behind.

| the extra baggage by the grade of nine.

Many expect his lyrics to be mirror reflections of mainstream misogyny with men as the sexual objects, instead of women. But the way Moore sees it, gay hip hop artists offer something completely different.

KEVIN MOORE: I'll show how a man can be vulnerable and still hold on to his masculinity. And it's OK for you to see yourself in another person and it be a male. Some of us feel that we can't support an artist unless it's the embodiment of what I wish I was. That's part of our internalized homophobia. That's my warm up.

NIKKI TUNDEL: For the most part, says Moore, Minneapolis audiences have been accepting of his sexuality. When he's encountered pushback, it's typically been in the Black community. But as far as he's concerned, that's understandable.

KEVIN MOORE: You're talking about a population of people who have been told you're dark, you're different. It's common practice for them not to be respected.

NIKKI TUNDEL: So coming out isn't always cause for celebration.

KEVIN MOORE: They're not going to be necessarily the most adamant about, hey, this is me. This is who I am. Respect me. No. Shout-out to everybody that don't think that hip hop has room for the gay rappers. It's about to change.

NIKKI TUNDEL: Kevin Moore didn't set out to be a crusader for gay Twin Cities rappers. But in a way, that's what he's become.

KEVIN MOORE: The more that time has progressed, I think that that's my duty to do it. At the end of the day, that's the lens in which I speak from. I know no other experience as much as I know that one.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Look at the world.

It's a new day, good.

Kicks [INAUDIBLE].

NIKKI TUNDEL: And no one, he says, can represent his reality better than he can.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm an open book.

Nikki Tundel, Minnesota Public Radio News, Minneapolis