Isaiah Rashad has been through a lot in the five years since The House is Burning. A sex tape was leaked non-consensually, leading him to have to wrestle with himself publicly before he was ready.
This led to a continued struggle with drugs and alcohol, as well as grappling with his sense of sexuality. “At some point in time, I accepted that they don’t make a manual for being a bisexual Black dude,” Rashad told The Breakfast Club.
All of this led to him making It’s Been Awful, his long-awaited follow-up, released on May 1st. During his conversation with The Breakfast Club, Isaiah Rashad candidly admitted to struggling with a litany of drugs. But all of these ups and downs led to him learning more about himself. Moreover, it led him to believe that there’s some spiritual force leading him to the current moment.
Isaiah Rashad Candidly Responds to His Leaked Tape
“I feel like I’ve always been under some type of divine guidance. I grew up in a church, and I grew out of wanting to go as much. But my life… It’s purposeful. I don’t feel like an artist just to make some money. I’m here to affect change in some way,” Rashad said.
Charlamagne Tha God wondered if there was some form of liberation that came with being exposed in such a cruel way. The Chattanooga-born rapper admitted that it was a mix of feeling broken and free alike. Ultimately, he knew he couldn’t control how he was perceived. Letting that go allowed him to really look deep at his masculinity.
“It made me confront a lot of stuff that I was saying about women. A lot of ways I was expressing myself was really coming just from a place of insecurity,” Rashad admitted. “I feel like I’ve gotten to love myself a little better.”
Not only did it allow him a better relationship with himself, but it also allowed him to be even more honest with his friends and family. “I talked to my homeboys about everything I was going through. They were the ones that was like, ‘what the f**k are you doing?’” Rashad continued.
“My homeboys know everything about me,” he added. “You have conversations on tour, just in life, especially when we was drinking. When you like that, it’s more so respecting my own privacy to my life. It was just being irresponsible… allowing things to go out.”
The post Isaiah Rashad Grappled With Sexuality While Making His New Album: ‘It Made Me Confront a Lot of Stuff’ appeared first on VICE.
