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The Out100 designates All That’s In.

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Young M.A
Music

Young M.A Is the First LGBTQ+ Rapper to Cover Out Magazine

The artist released her debut album, "Herstory in the Making," earlier this year.

At this point, making history -- ahem, herstory -- must come easy to Young M.A. After all, Herstory in the Making was the name of her debut album released earlier this year. With the Brooklyn native landing a spot on our 2019 Out100 as Rapper of the Year, she makes history, herstory, and theirstory as the first LGBTQ+ rapper to grace the cover of the magazine.

"I was like, 'Hello!'" she laughed when asked about the magazine's initial offer.

Founded in 1992, Out has long championed LGBTQ+ musicians across genres with artists of all stripes as cover stars. Rap and hip-hop artists however, though highlighted throughout the pages of the magazine and on Out.com, have often not landed such coveted print real estate. In fact, a cursory search of the Out archives shows only two other hip-hop artists have ever gotten the front page treatment -- Lil' Kim in 1999 and Nicki Minaj in 2010.

During her Out100 cover shoot and interview, M.A mentioned she hesitated saying yes to the feature, admitting that she hoped the focus of our story would not be her sexuality. The lyricist stopped labeling her identity "a few years ago," she said, but still gets asked for interviews most frequently when the media wants to talk about homophobia in hip-hop, or during Pride month.

"At first I believed in the whole identity thing," she said. "I just got to a point where I was like, at the end of the day, nobody can make no rules on what I decide to do. 'Yo listen, don't call me this. Don't call me that. I do what I want. I love who I love. I want who I want.' And I'm not the only one. There's a lot of people in this world who just choose not to identify."

"But then I was like, 'No. I get it. It's not [about] labels. [It's] expressing oneself. It's a magazine that shows your expression of who you are and what you represent,'" she added, which pairs well with where she is in her life and career."

M.A joins Sam Smith, Jeremy O. Harris, Ronan Farrow, Nicolas Ghesquiere as Out100 cover stars.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect that Nicki Minaj was also a cover star.

RELATED | Out100 Rapper of the Year: Young M.A Is 'Herstory in the Making'

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Franziska Krug for H&M via Getty Images; Courtesy NYC.gov
Troye Sivan and Rush poppers bottle
Franziska Krug for H&M via Getty Images; Courtesy NYC.gov
Music

Troye Sivan mourns 'poppers party' ending

The gay singer's song "Rush" was an ode to the popular party drug, which appears to be facing a federal crackdown.

Troye Sivan's heartbeat isn't racing anymore.

The gay singer and actor — known for his hit song "Rush," an ode to the popular party drug poppers — has reacted to the FDA's apparent poppers crackdown. He posted on his Instagram Stories Sunday that "I felt the rush" with a broken heart emoji.

Sivan posted two pictures, one showing him with a sad look on his face (the opposite of his poppers-influenced look on the cover art for "Rush") with the caption: "mfw the poppers party is over."

The song "Rush," off the album Something to Give Each Other, is one of Sivan's most popular tracks, reaching number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Hot Dance/Electronic chart.

In the song, he sings, "You got my heartbeat racing / My body blazing / I feel the rush / Addicted to your touch," comparing the rush one gets from poppers to the rush of flirting with a lover.

Troye's post appeared responsive a recent piece in TheNew York Times, which posed the question, "Is the Poppers Party over," along with an image of several popular brands. When the news outlet posted the story on its Instagram page, people chimed in with their own responses.

"Won't do anything for a measles outbreak or public health funding, but god forbid there's poppers. Such a joke," wrote @grantgold_.

"America banned poppers faster than guns," added @lowercaseletter.

"Trump doesn't feel the rush," @carrecupero said.

In March, Double Scorpio, a company that sells clothing, accessories, lube, and Double Scorpio Cleaner, a popular brand of poppers, shut down all operations following an FDA search and seizure at its offices.

The company wiped its website and social media and replaced both with a statement noting the search and seizure on March 13, 2025.

"Thank you to everyone who has supported us these last eight years. We’ve always cared about making an authentic product and being engaged with and supporting our community," the statement read. "We are very proud that we managed to build a brand that people can trust, and we don’t want to see that trust exploited. The links listed here will be the only channels where we will communicate from going forward. Thanks for everything… and remember, keep supporting queer businesses, creators, and your local queens."

The company said it also believed the FDA had "performed similar actions" towards other manufacturers and sellers of poppers, and other companies including Pac-West Distributing, which produces the Rush brand of poppers, also wiped its website.

The FDA is currently under the lead of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was named secretary of Health and Human Services by President Trump. In the past, Kennedy has said that he believes poppers caused AIDS.

"The virus is a passenger virus, and these people are dying mainly because of poppers," he said in a video. "A hundred percent of the people who died in the first thousand [with] AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause Kaposi sarcoma in rats. And they were people who were part of a gay lifestyle where they were burning the candle at both ends."

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