Clay Cane

Author and musician Tim'm T. West talks about being an HIV-positive rapper, educating gay youths, his successful music career, and what he'd trade it all for.

Vanessa Williams was for gay rights before beauty queens were allowed to have opinions. As she promotes her new album The Real Thing , it's no surprise that Williams couldn't care less what Carrie Prejean thinks.

The only white artist who has been thoroughly embraced by the black audience, long before Christina Aguilera and the slew of girls to follow, Teena Marie has dominated blue-eyed soul.

Despite a rough couple of years, onetime R&B princess Brandy is holding her head high on her new album Human. Though gay fans would probably line the block for a sequel of "The Boy Is Mine" with former duet buddy Monica, don't hold your breath -- Brandy, now 29, says, "We're too old for that."

Armed with a new album of soul classics and his trademark blunt outlook on the state of the world, Seal sat down with Advocate.com to discuss the rumors that he and wife Heidi Klum would have left the country had John McCain been elected, the gay rights movement, and what makes Seal's sound so damn sexy.

Kim Osorio became a hip-hop legend in 2003 when she became the first (and so far, only) female editor in chief at The Source magazine, regarded as the Bible of hip-hop. After she was fired in 2005, Osorio took her case to court -- and won a judgment in her favor to the tune of $7.5 million. Now in her book, Straight From the Source, Osorio talks about the sexism and homophobia that often shaped her time in and around the hip-hop industry.