Religious hip-hop artist puts his complex identity onscreen
Thursday, July 12, 2012
by emma silvers, j. staff
There’s a telling moment, midway through “Y-Love” — a new documentary named for its subject, the boundary-breaking black Orthodox Jewish rapper — in which the artist contemplates his public and private identities.
Yitz Jordan, he explains, is the regular person. Y-Love is the hip-hop sensation: all attitude, swagger and undeniable stage presence. Y-Love doesn’t quite care if people don’t understand how rap and observant Judaism go hand in hand.
The artist recently added one more piece to the identity puzzle. In May, after the film wrapped, he announced he was gay — a move he says has helped to resolve some of the dissonance in his life.
“That split, that disconnect between ‘Y-Love’ and Yitz Jordan, a lot of that was a function of the closet. That was the No. 1 thing that wasn’t allowing me to be myself,” says Jordan, 34, by phone from his home in New York, two months after coming out. He’ll be in San Francisco for the documentary’s world premiere July 24 at the Jewish Film Festival and will perform the next night at Milk Bar in the Haight.
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/65710/religious-hip-hop-artist-puts-his-complex-identity-onscreen/
