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Big Dipper is coming to Denver & we chatted with him about music, sex, and body image

Big Dipper is coming to Denver & we chatted with him about music, sex, and body image

Pride is here, ladies. With the summer heat — which we are just now experiencing — comes a month-long celebration of just how queer, and proud of it, we are. Denver’s line up for Pride may have you scratching your head on what events to hit up, but one you shouldn’t miss Big Dipper’s performance at the Wrangler on Friday, June 17.

Big Dipper, the rapping queer bear, sat down and talked with us about his music, building up a positive body image, and getting people on their feet or in the bathroom stall for a quick treat.

How did you get started?

I got into music in 2012 when I released my first song. So it’s been about four of five years since I started making my own music. It’s funny, because it started as a joke — a one-off. It was never meant to start a music career; I just wanted to make a song with my friends and do a cool music video.

But … I fell in love with it, especially the performing. Being a performer was a completely new thing in my life and I wasn’t just behind the scenes.

I think a lot of people who make music grew up playing instruments, and while I did that in middle school and high school I was never passionate or interested in making it a career, because I don’t have a great singing voice and I never really excelled at the instruments I played. I was good at writing and rapping, but I didn’t think a person like me could be a rapper. I never thought it was even a possibility.

BD_DavidHaweWhat do you mean a person like you?

I mean a gay person. I mean a white person. I mean a campy, theatrical person.

I first started hearing about gay rappers late in high school and early college, and all of them were conventionally good looking. I didn’t come into my own identity as a sexual being, or categorized as a bear, until late in my life. As a young person I had really shitty self-esteem about my sexuality and my body; I didn’t see myself as a sexual being.

I never saw someone like me doing it, so I figured I couldn’t do it.

Your music and videos today are very sexualized. How did you come to start seeing yourself as a sexual being?

You know, I use the term late bloomer to describe myself across the board. I’m 31 now and I’m just figuring out a lot of life things.

I blossomed sexually really late. The body I have right now was there but I didn’t know how to be in it until my mid 20s. It was all slow and steady. I have friends who

tell me they lost their virginity at 14 and knew they were gay, and my brain just explodes because I couldn’t see myself in that way.

There’s a part of me that feels I missed out on a few years of me owning my body and my sexuality, and that’s why I push it so hard now in my music and my videos. The world needs representation of a big-bodied, gay person who is making it as a rapper. The world needs someone like me to be an openly sex-positive entertainer.

Because your music is so sexual, did you ever experience any hesitation?

Yeah, I got fired from a job — and that really blew.

Hell, you can even look back at the first video I made Drip Drop, which is one of the more tamed videos and see a warning title. Looking back at it now, it’s cartoony and tamed in my mind now compared to what the mainstream rap artists are releasing — but I was really nervous putting this out there to the world.

I’m 31, which means that I was in high school when there wasn’t Facebook or YouTube, so people weren’t so public about their life or feelings. Now, young people grow up and they Facebook live their study group. They make Instagram videos about every opinion they have. People are much more free about what they put out in the world.

But Drip Drop was the first video I ever put on the internet with my face on it. I felt a lot of trepidation; I live in this world where people accept me for who I am, but are they really going to accept me?

Do you still feel that hesitation?

Not at all.

I’m very lucky because there are so many independent artists in the world who put out music, make videos, hustle, and get gigs, but they are unable to make money off it and have to work a day job. I’m so lucky that people like what I do and I’m able to travel and go to a place like Denver. It’s amazing I get to do this so I <do not> take that for granted.

I see every gig that I book as a green light, and every time I get up on stage and the crowd likes what I’m doing, it’s fuel to my confidence. But to this day, I will still get nervous before a show. I always want people to like what I’m doing, but that’s just the sign of a good performer; I never take for granted that the audience is going to enjoy what I’m doing.

Even if I get on the stage and everyone in the room is looking at me like a crazy person, I know I just played 20 gigs before that where they didn’t — so I can write that one off.

BD_BryanWhitelyWhat sets you apart from the other artists who can’t solidify music as a full-time job?

Things that I pride myself on, which is not exciting for an interview, is that I’m responsible and professional. I communicate with promoters and promote the shows on all the social media, and those things really carry with the people who book you.

The only reason divas that have shitty behavior continue to work are because of likes and follows. So if I had a video that came out and it was watched more than 10 million times, then you could put me in your club with a $20 cover and people would still come and see it. I could act a damn fool and still get my money. But I’m not in that position so I have to put in the work and book myself at these clubs.

I don’t consider myself above anything.

The other part is that there is not another artist that looks like me. I would love to see another artists that does what I do; we could do a song together. But the reason I’m around is because it is unique.

Do you think you could ever break into mainstream music?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I don’t know.

I don’t necessarily think so, especially not in the form that my music is in right now. I used to think that the world just wasn’t ready yet. I have a really skewed perspective of the world though.

I am a queer artist and I speak about my own perspective so my work is full of writing music with a queer point of view, releasing videos with the same point of view, then when I go out to clubs I’m surrounded by queers. My perspective of the world is that we live in a queer one that just happens to have straight people around.

So whenever bigots appear, I just don’t understand that. Aren’t we all just sucking dick out here?

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that 90 percent of the world is not into gay shit. Then you look at the math. We are a minority. So if we’re generous, we could bump it up to 25 percent of people in the world who would actively support queer themes in media.

To me, we won’t break into ‘mainstream’ with such little support. There’s not enough money in it.

What can we expect from the show at the Wrangler?

I don’t know yet!

What I can tell you is that my show is exciting. It is raunchy. It makes you want to dance. It makes you want to grind up on someone in the audience. My goal is that someone is fucking in the bathroom at the end of my show — or just on the dance floor.

That’s the kind of energy I want to bring to Denver.

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