That is the assertion of Nirpal Dhaliwal from The Guardian and beyond. As a callow youth I once interviewed Warren G and was astonished to seem him unself-consciously apply hand cream. I have heard the rumours percolating around the biggest names in hip hop - Jay z and LL Cool J have both been the victims of whispering campaigns - and certainly when I met Common and Kanye West last year I was surprised at how unmacho they were in person. Perhaps it’s only when you meet the stars up close that you truly appreciate that rap music is a branch of the light entertainment industry and the postures of rappers is often just a low slung charicature of masculinty designed to appeal to the kind of mouth breathing white 14 year olds who used to buy records. Only someone profoundly unsure about their sexuality would need the kind of butressing machismo that hip hop offers.

After spend twenty years interviewing musicians I have arrived at the inescapable concluded that the best pop operates in the spaces where conflicting ideas meet. Black meets white, gay meets straight, macho meets gay. It’s only when the The reason Elvis was such a powerful figure is that he personified so many warring forces - church and sex, gay and straight, black and white. After 40 years of that, no wonder he died on the toilet.