if the shoe fits...

After mocking LGBTQ people for decades, 50 Cent says it “stings” when people call him a homophobe

50 Cent has a long history of making homophobic and transphobic remarks. But in a new interview with The Independent, he says it “stings” when people label him a homophobe.

“[People] saw me being aggressive,” the rapper, who is currently promoting his new show Power Book III: Raising Kanan, explains while talking about his anti-LGBTQ past. “They saw the stereotype.”

We’d argue that people didn’t so much see a “stereotype” as they did a person using their huge platform to spew anti-LGTBQ vitriol for nearly 20 years and then never apologize for any of it.

In a 2004 interview with Playboy, 50 Cent said he wasn’t “into f*ggots” and doesn’t like gay people around him “because I’m not comfortable with what their thoughts are.”

In 2010, he said any man who doesn’t sleep with women should “just kill” themselves and make the world a “better place.” That same year he also made a joke about sending a gunman to “shoot up a gay wedding.”

In 2014, he alleged Diddy, Rick Ross, and ex-record exec Steve Stout were all gay in a same-sex relationship together. And in 2015, he complained that Empire, Lee Daniels’ acclaimed LGBTQ-inclusive series about a hip-hip music company, had too much “extra gay stuff.”

Then there are his many, many, many social media posts from over the years mocking LGBTQ people, particularly trans people, including Dwyane Wade’s 12-year-old daughter, Zaya, who come out just last year.

But now, in the year 2021, 50 Cent says he’s not homophobic and it hurts his feelings when people say that he is.

“That stings,” he tells the Independent, noting that his own mother, who died when he was eight years old, identified queer.

“She was like that,” he says. “She had a girlfriend around.”

You know what else stings? Bullying a 12-year-old on social media for coming out as trans.

If 50 Cent doesn’t like being called a homophobe, one thing he could do is actually apologize for all his past homophobic remarks and then quit disparaging LGBTQ people going forward.

Graham Gremore is the Features Editor and a Staff Writer at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.

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