An openly gay New York-based rapper made his network TV debut on Letterman last week.

Le1f, who made a name for himself by calling out Macklemore, performed his upbeat single “Wut.”  Gawker highlights the significance of the move. 

From Gawker:

And then, while wearing a skort (at least I think it’s a skort — the legs are visible and the skirt part hangs loosely, so if this is a skort it’s openly skort) and in front of two male backup dancers, Le1f preceded to perform the s*** out of his single “Wut.” If his appearance and voice scanned ambiguously to people who were being exposed to his talent for the first time, the refrain of “Wut” answered any questions they might have about his identity: “I’m gettin’ light in my loafers,” he says a few times in the song.

Or maybe people still didn’t pick up on it and just saw an energetic, eccentric rapper. Regardless, Le1f didn’t hide from himself. He was able to present himself as matter-of-factly gay, as opposed to someone whose gayness is the only fact that matters. He was a human, not a fetish object. He was a rapper, not think-piece fodder.

Read more at Gawker

After the performance, Le1f tweeted, “Thank you so much to @Letterman for inviting me to perform on his stage as a musician and not as a spectacle.”

Thoughts on the performance and its significance?

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