Homophobia in hip hop

The phrase "No Homo" is an old phrase from about 5 years ago that is making appearances all over the blogosphere right now. I would like to take this opportunity to take advantage of this discourse around "No Homo" to extend it to a larger discussions of homophobia in hip-hop and in US pop culture at large.

So I want to first start out by saying that "No Homo" is not the first and probably not the last dig at homosexuals in hip-hop culture. According to Slate: