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VIBE: I'ma start it off by asking everybody to introduce yourselves and to categorize yourselves: freak, ho, or none of the above.

My name is Andre Benjamin, and I'm a freak with my woman. I think everybody's a freak to a certain level. It's just what level you tryin' take it to.

I'm Nona Hendryx. I think I definitely fall under the freak category.

I've always been a-my name is Roy Ayers-I've always been a freak. I composed a song a few years back titled "Freaky Deaky" and had to stop performing it because, in Detroit, some cat shot his wife for dancing with another cat, doing "the Freak." Wh en it comes to love and sex, it's all freaky, real, and personal.

Redman, Death Squad Crew, a.k.a. Soopaman Luva. No question, I definitely get freaky wit' it and with my music. I use sex, not as a weapon or an excuse, but mentality-wise, 'cause that's what make me feel good. So, sex with the music, I can't ask f or anything more. You know what I'm saying? Ha-haa!

My name is Luther Campbell. I'm synonymous with freak. Some folks call me a pussy-ologist.

I'm James Carter, and I'm a jazz woodwind player, which encompasses saxophones, flutes, clarinets, oboes, bassoons, and anything else with a mouthpiece [panel laughs]. It's an oral thang.

I'm Vanessa Daou. I guess I'm just a free spirit. I grew up in St. Thomas, an environment where there were no boundaries. My music incorporates a lot of sexual, intellectual poetry: two themes I like exploring as opposed to exploiting. What is a freak? Ayers: It's the ultimate place that I can go.
Carter: So freak means emancipation?
Hendryx: It's a mental thing. When I say I'm a freak, I mean I've experienced a lot of things sexually, and I hope to continue doing that. But some things I don't want to actually experience [panel laughs]. Like the guy in England who died with the ball and stocking tied around his neck, in chains. So what's the difference between what he did and what you're doing? Hendryx: No difference. It's choice. Some people's desires harm others, like rape, child abuse. But as far as loving and interacting with another hum an being, I'll go as far as I need to go.

Redman: Being freaky is a way of life, yo. It's not even the definition, it's the feeling. You ain't even gotta let anybody take you to a certain limit, you could just be freaky. I'm just naturally freaky; wake up freaky.

Hendryx: Well, freaking is life to you, obviously.

Redman: Freaky is a state of being. You notice sometimes a person look at you and be, like, "You look like you get busy"? That's the freaky presence you give off.

Campbell: But when you start doing, uh, golden showers and breaking out gerbils, that's the point when you know you have to stop.

Hendryx: That's your point.

Campbell: That's my point. But you know, I don't practice basic sex. I try to get creative as I can, 'cause I feel like I got to represent. My art is based around sex, so I constantly try to experience more different things in my life in ord er to be truthful about it in my art form. If you gonna coach the game, you gotta be able to play.

How do you feel about groupies?

Hendryx: There are fans and then there are music lovers. Some people will come to your show and enjoy it. A groupie is at every show. They'll follow you to Europe. They know everything about you. They will do anything for you. If you pee, they will wipe your behind.

Do groupies serve their purpose?

Hendryx: Yeah, if you on the downslope! Laughs

Ayers: They lift you up! They lift you up!

Andre: They want to be a part of something. There's groupies in music, there's groupies in the church. That's why a lot of ministers get caught with women. They be at the altar, in the church pews sitting there talking 'bout "I'm admiring this man 'cause he up here sayin' something to me." So they want to be around it. Same thing with music.

So groupies are attracted to power or sex or both? Redman: From the hip hop aspect in 1997, you have a lot of male groupies who follow you around, just acting like women [table boos]. It's true though! I'm not trying to say that's a woman thing, but nowadays a groupie is a person, usually a female, who comes back to the hotel and pass off the ass-not even for [the headliner] but just anybody to get in the party free, to get that cognac.

Andre: And they'll try to play it off, but it'll slip out. You'll know 'cause they might say, "Oh, man, that's the same coat Redman had."

This goes into the power of black sexuality. Like, how Elvis put America into a nervous breakdown 'cause it was the first time America was confronted with overt black sexuality-even if it was from a white man.

Daou: But there is a total double standard. You see it in music videos. There's such a prevalent split between white and black music. Like, you look at videos that get played on the Box as opposed to MTV and it's, you know, so-called black music as opposed to white alternative grunge "kill me, I'm a loser" kind of music. MTV would never allow that kind of black sexuality.

Hendryx: There is an implicit sexual intent in a lot of those [white] videos as well. It's just treated differently. Black people have always been, as we say, rhythmic and sexual in our music and rituals. The type of sexual content that comes out i n grunge music is much more deviant…

Daou: Subliminal.

Hendryx: Subliminal. But it is there, and it gets across, it's just cloaked.

There's a lot more shame.

Hendryx: Rather than grinding your pelvis, it's an intellectual sexuality.

Daou: It's rock 'n' roll as opposed to the whole jazz tradition. Jazz was once considered sex music, really. But because it's rock 'n' roll, you can say almost anything and get away with it, because that's the tradition.

Ayers: Well, it's what rock 'n' roll has become today in contrast to what it started out being. Because originally it was presented by black people too.

Carter: It was called rock 'n' roll because of the rock and the roll.

Hendryx: But black people, in this country and in Africa, always lived in very limited space, and lived communally where sex and intimacies went on.

Redman: You heard the guy next-door [pounds on the table].

Ayers: Or mom and dad in the room.

Hendryx: There is this idea that sex should be kept quiet, whereas with black people, especially if you were brought across as a slave, sex was like, "Let's do it all, y'all."
Sex in the slave ship. That's some new, new, new...

Hendryx: What did you think? It was a long trip.

Campbell: I think America, period, has a problem with a black person's sexuality. I mean, everybody gets nervous when they see a beautiful, black, fine woman in a Luke Campbell video.

Daou: I know which one you're talking about.

Campbell: I sit back and I look at the beer commercials, and I see white girls runnin' through the snow with bikinis on. So I put a beautiful black girl in the video with the same outfit. But when they see that body, muthafuckers get nervous.
I was in Mississippi once, and when they put on bass music, the men had to step far-the-fuck back-it was woman time.

Campbell: Let me tell you, my brother flies Nelson Mandela around sometimes when [Mandela] comes to the country. Once he let Winnie hear our music and see a video, and she said, "Hey, this how we dance back in Africa, and they have on less clothes than that!" This is our culture, and it's ironic that it's just coming back to our people here in the States.
I'm curious about how y'all feel about overtly sexual rappers like Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown-who do they represent as women, and what are the effects of that image?

Campbell: When people do a certain type of music, I can pretty much feel where they come from, whether it's real or not. When I interviewed Lil' Kim on my TV show, it was kind of deep because she came from a very sexual background. Some things she was proud of doing; some things that she wasn't proud of doing. People make and buy music they can relate to, whether it's sexual, gospel, or whatever. The things that Kim or I have on the record, girls talk about every day.

Hendryx: Well, you can go back to Josephine Baker dancing in bananas. But the issue is that Madonna gets to redeem herself. It becomes an art form, and she gets to legitimize herself in the eyes of society by becoming a movie star. But will Lil' Ki m or Foxy get to legitimize themselves?

Campbell: That's the biggest problem in this industry today. You listen to Alanis Morissette's album-woo! She's talking about giving head in the movie theater! Woman ain't got no sticker nowhere on the album. Madonna can go play at all the m ajor venues; but us rappers, because we might have some sexual lyrics, we can't.

Andre: They set up obstacles, and when I say "they," it don't got to be white folks either. But I think it's good to a certain extent, because when they say, "Y'all can't do y'all video like this," we so creative, we'll turn that around and do some thing very tight-lipped. It just makes us think more.
I grew up with hip hop, and I've seen how parties have changed; they lack that sexual energy I remember in the basement when peoples was going to find a way to get on to the wall.

Ayers: I'm probably the oldest one here, and I wonder what happened to the old grind?
Being from down South, it's only till I got up here that folks didn't slow dance at parties anymore. Reggae is red light now.

Daou: Well, growing up on an island where there were no inhibitions in that way, you could go to Carnival and totally get down with the person next to you and not be afraid. It's such a different thing. And with the whole concept of Original Sin, I figure you might as well be original about the way you sin.

Hendryx: First time, they were happy in the garden.
So when did y'all start fucking like you was grown?

Andre: Well, I think of it like this: Every parent should teach they kids about sex from when the kids can understand the word. I don't blame my mom, but I don't know why she didn't teach me about it when I was growing up. I had to go sneak my uncl e's movies. I be at my cousins', and we used to, like, get down. We didn't know; we was just playing.

Hendryx: At 14, I felt a real strong need to cuddle, French kiss, all that. From then on, it just escalated.

Ayers: I was making love to my ex-wife, in the house, in the kitchen. I was 17, she was 15, and we did it so quiet and cool. That was my first experience, and I was going wild. I was with her every chance I had. She got pregnant and we married when I was 18. I had a son and stayed married for five years.

Redman: I think I was like six or seven and my parents had that Joy of Sex book that show you how to set it. Me and this girl was looking at the pictures, trying it in the bathroom. Pants down and everything. My pops caught us, asked what I was doing. I said I was doing that in the book. He asked me, "What is that?" I told him I didn't know, and he explained to me right then. Then he beat my ass.

Hendryx: But that was play.

Redman: But not even. Just the mentality of trying and gettin' it at that age, with the book and everything, and knowing what was going down.

Ayers: You remember when you got your first nut?

Redman: Yeah, when I jerked off. Wasn't nothin' happening before that. I was like 14 or 15.

Campbell: As far as experiencing sex, shit, I was about 10 years old, didn't know what the hell I was doing. I got five brothers, and they're running around with these girls getting they freak on, telling me that I gotta do it. You know I did, but I didn't know. Enjoying it, I was about 17, 'cause I knew I was trying to please the girl. I got some head at 16-that's when the shit really changed. I was, like, Oh!! Oh!! Hell, yeah. I gotta do this heah more often.

Carter: Consciously, when I was trying to really please, I would say 18. It was beautiful, hip; the elements just fell together. It was July and quite hot.
What's up with heat? Why does it make us-?

Ayers: Everybody loves the sunshine!

Daou: I guess I was about 16, with a sailor. It was one of those things that at the time I didn't question. Luckily, it was such a freeing experience, and everything later was trying to find that again, till I met Peter, my husband, and I was, like , You knew it. We got married, like, three weeks later.

Andre: Well, as far as my first actual orgasm, I was playing with myself. I just recently started making love about four years ago-I'm only 21. Especially when our first album came out, man, I was wild. With the new album, it's different. I talk ab out what we talking about now. Songs like "Jazzy Belle" and "Babylon." On "Babylon," we get into issues like gay folks.
Why can't there be an openly gay rapper?

Andre: While I don't think nobody should judge nobody, I'm against it totally. That's straight Babylon. Society created it. If it was a perfect world, it wouldn't be no gay folks. I believe you may have a feminine boy, and the only reason he turn g ay is because everybody called him feminine or a sissy. He had to get with people who were feminine like him. Everybody wanted to relate to something, and that's how the gay stuff started. That's how I think.

Hendryx: Having gone from both sides of the street myself, to me it's my personal choice; some people may have been born with that predisposition, going back to the Romans and Greeks. Being stigmatized by your sexuality is the same thing as being s tigmatized by your color or your neighborhood. I cannot judge another human being in that way.

Andre: That's true.
Ayers: You don't mess with somebody else's decision, whatever it is. Just be straight up with me in regards to being responsible, but it's going to happen whether I accept it or not. I have thought many times that if everybody was gay, bisexual, or lesbia n, there wouldn't be no more life. But I do say live and let live.

Redman: You can either be a part of it or not. A brother like me choose not to be a part of it.

Hendryx: You also have to look at other species as well. They've been here longer than us. They adapt according to their needs in nature. We just happen to have a brain....

Andre: That's what makes us different: the choice. And that all I'm saying is that everybody's got their own choice. Personally, it is a problem, just like drugs.

Hendryx: That's your opinion...

Daou: And it's wrong!

Campbell: I love me some bisexual women!

Hendryx: All the men I know would love to see two women get it on. But they can't deal with two men.

Andre: That's because we like women, know what I'm saying? It don't matter if it's three or four or one of them. You attracted to something beautiful. I mean, that's like saying, I like this flower; if you put two flowers together, I'm still gonna like both of the flowers.

So it's Babylon, but it's beautiful?

Andre: No, I said the women are beautiful. What they doing is not right.

Daou: It is for me.

Hendryx: It's all about what we were taught as children. All that comes from these books of grand knowledge, written by men. I'm not going to get feminist on you right now-we ain't got time-but Yoko Ono said, "Women are the niggers of the world," a nd I can understand that. All of my male friends-heterosexual and gay-really like seeing two women get it on.

Campbell: Noooo, I like being a part of it. But I ain't with that two-man thing. It's painful enough getting with a virgin.

Hendryx: But you know there's a lot of women who go that way. My friend just told me the other day, "Yeah, he fucked me up my butt," and she loved it. I went, like, You did what?!

Redman: Now, see, from a man to a woman, I never thought there were too many problems with that. But not man to man. I just can't see it. I don't see the mutualness they got in that shit, man. I really don't. But unless you experienced it, you can' t really talk. That's why I leave it on a hush-hush.

Hendryx: But you have to recognize that there have been gay people, like James Baldwin, who fought for our freedom, who were willing to die, who were not afraid. I cannot dismiss people based on their sex, race. I dismiss people based on how they t reat me.