All About Laughs
Tank, and R&B singer, and one-third of short-lived super-group TGT, has been a steady option for music fans opting for relationship drama from the male perspective and bedroom jams.
He made his solo debut with “Maybe I Deserve” some 20 years ago; a mid-tempo lament featuring his smooth baritone emoting on the aftermath of being cheated on. And he’s stayed in the game with “Please Don’t Go”, “F*ckin’ With Me”, and “When We” – all singles with heavy rotation on urban adult-contemporary airwaves.
With a great deal of Tank’s music being drenched in overt sexuality and tales of infidelity, many of the Maryland natives’ fans have wondered and even inquired just how closely the lyrics of his songs resemble his real life.
In an interview with Angela Yee’s Lip Service that now lives in infamy, Tank said a man who engages in oral sex with another man “once or twice” isn’t necessarily gay. In context, a back and forth exchange about ‘what crossed line makes a man or woman a liar in a relationship’ preceded it. The issue of “once or twice” dominated the conversation. Angela Yee escalated the debate by asking, ‘if a man has an affair “with a man once or twice” does that make him gay?’
50 Cent, the ever-present venerated social media troll that he is- pounced. 50 ridiculed the statement and by proxy, invited millions more to do the same. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Fifty lambasted Tank, calling him the pejorative, “Suga Tank.”
Thereafter, Tank would address the controversy in an interview with Hoodrich Radio’s DJ Scream and Moran the Man. Tank stated, “These people are wild man. In the dumb place which is social media, people would rather enjoy the click-bait and the clip. It’s more exciting to take that and run with it and come to my page and leave derogatory comments and tell me I’m gay and do all of these things instead of actually watching the interview and seeing what it was all about.”
He continued, “We were talking about two lies and if that makes a person a liar…and I said ‘I don’t think that makes a person a liar’…not me – hypothetically. I was clear when I was born, know what I am…know what I want…and somehow it became ‘Tank is gay.’”
DJ Scream followed by asking, “Wasn’t there a prior interview where something else sexual came up that may have fed into it?”
Tank responded, “No. That was the salad-tossing thing. How am I gay if I like for a woman to get a little salad? I don’t want her to use no utensils, you know what I’m saying? But that is a woman…my wife. What does that make me? There was a time, you know, some people believe everything done within a heterosexual relationship is fair game. I don’t agree. [But] I don’t judge.
