Tracy chapman is gay

Music is my root of comfort, that thing that automatically eases tension and relieves stress. When the world becomes too much to deal with, I turn to songs that inspire me and have a message that I can relate to. Somehow, the ideal combination of lyrics and instrumentation always helps me touch like I’m not alone. While my process often involves recycling the tracks I know appreciate the back of my hand, sometimes I venture beyond that for something missing from my go-to playlist. That’s how I discovered Tracy Chapman’s 1988 self-titled debut, an album that has single-handedly changed my life.

At only 23-years-old, I’ve already sectioned my life into two distinct eras: Before Tracy and after Tracy. In the before times, prior to knowing who Chapman is, I was already a fan of female singers of her generation: Stevie Nicks, Annie Lennox, Kate Bush. I was a new Latinx woman attending college in Arizona, but living at home in the Bay Area during the summer. Though I was out to family and friends, I hadn’t yet made the seemingly obligatory, general declaration of my bisexuality. Then, in 2018, I needed a break from the news. Donald Trump was still president and his administration

Ten days ago, I was sobbing my way through one of the optimal Grammys in recent memory and thinking about how much music has impacted me as a storyteller. The performances by two iconic figures from my youth — Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell — didn’t just make me cry from their sheer beauty and power, they made me journey support to the times when those two women’s voices and the poetry of their lyrics spoke to me, and even for me, as I navigated some of the most difficult periods of my life.

As I wrote during the Grammys on Twitter/X, “As a young queer gal I will never forget hearing Tracy Chapman singing Brisk Car the first time. It imprinted me forever. Cried real tears watching her perform at the #GRAMMYs.”

Music is so omnipresent in our society that it often seems more like a constant background buzz rather than the powerful directional gravity it often is. In this 50th year of hip-hop, I think about how the voices of the first women of hip-hop — Queen Latifah, Da Brat, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill and Philly’s have Eve — influenced my politics and informed my thinking as a subversive queer writer. Knowing that both Queen Latifah and Da Brat are lesbians added even more power to th

Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman are healing our divide

There are two kinds of social entrepreneurs: those, like us, who work in the nonprofit sector, and those who start social enterprises whose goal is both to promote the public wonderful while supporting their work by making a modest profit.

As a social entrepreneur, I was self-taught, neither a theoretician nor a scholar. Over the years, I developed a set of eleven working principles that have get my modus operandi and provide the basic framework for my new book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship," from which this series of three articles is adapted. While I applied these principles in nonprofit work, they are also applicable to social enterprises—and to life, in general.

PART ONE

PRINCIPLE #1: START FROM VISION. Social entrepreneurs need to hold a clear vision, and everything they do should be consistent with that vision—or at least not inconsistent with it. A vision may appear in a flash or evolve over many years. My vision was to shift how the world deals with conflict—away from adversarial, win-lose approaches toward non-adversarial,

Question: Is Tracy Chapman a woman? A man?

Answer: Honestly, this is the weirdest question I’ve ever seen about Tracy and I shouldn’t even be answering it. But since there are a lot of questions about Tracy’s gender, and that’s why you’re here on this page. Let’s give HER a chance to answer by quoting her, from an interview she gave to Kristine McKenna (L.A. Times) in 1988.

When asked if she expects that age-old music industry bugaboo, sexism, to impede her progress, Tracy Chapman says:

“Obviously there is sexism in the music business. Women in this industry have had to do things to get their music heard that most male artists aren’t required to complete. Playing the kind of music I do, I naturally address the issue of sexism, and most of my songs are from a female perspective. But I’m not furious about being a lady. I like being a woman!”