IN A TIME WHEN GAY MEN WOULD DANCE ON URBAN AND R&B SOUNDS, MARCOS JOSE BRITO WAS ON A CONSTANT QUEST FOR PLACES WHERE HE COULD FIND HIMSELF IN REAL HIP HOP MUSIC. ONLY TO REALIZE THAT WHERE THE HIP HOP CULTURE DIDN’T SEEM VERY OPEN-MINDED TOWARDS A GAY AUDIENCE, THE GAY COMMUNITY EQUALLY HAD A STEREOTYPE ATTITUDE ABOUT WHAT IT MEANT TO BE GAY AND WHAT MUSIC YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO. SOMETHING THAT HE, IN A PERIOD OF ONLY 6 YEARS, HAS POSITIVELY CHANGED.
Marcos Jose Brito was born in Basildon, Essex UK, in the year 1978, as the son of a British mother and Spanish father. After he successfully ended his studies in contemporary dance, acting and performing arts, Marcos worked 4 years for the popular website gayhiphop.com as a journalist. It was in this time he recorded his first gay rap under the name QBoy, unaware this would be the first step towards a successful international carer as gay rapper and hip hop artist. Over the past few years, QBoy has been active not only with his own music career, but also with the production of other artists, working as a DJ and being a spokes person for various LGBT organizations.
Over the years QBoy has developed himself into a breakthrough artist in the hip-hop, or homo-hop – music scene and an example for many young gay men. He speaks openly about his sexuality and sex is not a taboo in his music and video’s as he proofs again with his latest release Coming Out 2 Play. Even though he does not wishes to go into history as a gay rapper, for the moment he doesn’t shy away from it either. And why should he. He is good looking, witty, humorous and sexy, and has enough skill and talent to stay on top for a long time to come.
QBoy’s most recent musical adventure is Moxie, the long anticipated new album of this half British half Spanish artist, that opens a whole new chapter in the young rappers career. If you think you new QBoy, think again. Moxie combines commercial electro-pop, fidget house, disco and a variety of other popular music styles into catchy tracks like Set It Up/Pull It Off, Ghetto, Bounce Rave and the previously mentioned single Coming Out 2 Play. Currently QBoy is already finalizing the production of the video of his second single taken from Moxie, The Scream Track, and one can only hope it will take off where Coming Out 2 Play left us an open end. The album itself is an excellent example of music production and probably his most commercial work up to date. QBoy kicked of a promotional tour in May, which will take him to several European cities as well as the main cities in the USA. In July he is expected to perform at Pride London for a audience of 8,000 and August this year will see the launch of his long awaited photo book QBoy: Hottest In Homo-Hop, a large collection of photos by QBoy’s long time artistic collaborator and friend Greg Fredrick. And with the DVD release of the documentary Pick Up The Mic, we can safely say, this summer is most definitely a QBoy summer. –B-
Photography by: Magnus Hastings.
Read also BeautifulMag: QBoy Is Just so Fly.
QBOY | BEAUTIFUL
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