LEE SOULJA!
Black Gay Men Are The Peacocks Of The Human Species
By Kevin E. Taylor
We command and hold space just by being, but when we show up in our fullness, we are the most exquisite bird in the forest, land or sea. Yet, when I sat down to talk to Lee Soulja Simmons—fashionista and Ballroom icon–he was adorned in a demure and Harlem inspired 2-piece deep maroon and white sweat suit that was almost quiet for him. But he was just chilling at home, pulled together but polite. If he were bringing it to the streets, the avant-garde figure of fashion and Founder/Executive Director of NYC Center for Black Pride might have turned it out, as he has for decades!
Lee Soulja, founding Father of the House of Soulja, didn’t walk in a category to gain legendary status. He was walked into the Ballroom scene by a legend! Here’s how the story goes: Born and raised in the Bronx, Lee found his creative expression in hip-hop and dancing where he was part of one of those crews that was blowing up in the burgeoning beatbox and breakdancing culture! He would hang out and show out at clubs like the Garage and Studio 54, but his 14-year-old afro’d arrogance wasn’t afraid to be in the building. He walked in with hip-hop’s swag but was not anywhere near understanding his sexuality. He married at 21 and traveled the world, dancing in fashion shows in the 80’s and making his way to Japan to be a part of a Thierry Mugler show. There he met Willie Ninja, one of the stars of Paris Is Burning who was already an international sensation, who brought his energetic elegance on stage and destroyed and delighted the audience. They stayed in touch, traipsing the globe and found themselves both booked for a show in Manila, Philippines together. Willie couldn’t get into the country because they had imposed martial law, so he reached out to Lee Soulja, who used this as a moment to bring his hip-hop sensualities and Ninja’s voguing together to the stage, to represent both, and that was his introduction to the Ballroom floor. When he returned to NYC, Ninja brought him to the Ballroom community and Lee Soulja was born! Quiet and kind of shy, Soulja expressed himself through clothing and costumes and during his “Club Kid” period, he simply allowed the outrageousness of the club scene to absorb him. He got to be free. But he wasn’t his freest being yet. He needed Ballroom to bring his truth full and forward.
Ballroom is often about self-discovery. The Ballroom scene was birthed more than 150 years ago, in Harlem, where young fashionable Black drag queens held their ground as beauties participating in their own pageants, walking in a newfound sense of their own beauty. And then Crystal LaBeija and The Queen, a 1968 documentary that predated Stonewall, of a white drag pageant that unmasked the racism that those Black and brown participants were brought in to bring color but revealed the color conflict within the rainbow family. In the hands of Black drag queens and their supporters, Ballroom began an artform unto itself—bold, brass, loud and liquid, undeniable and indefinable. The culture grew until it became noticed by nightlife luminaries, film directors who wanted to document the stories, and artists who wanted to bask in the musicality of it until it took them to #1 like Madonna and Malcolm McLaren.
Lee Simmons had access to fashion and marketing which came through his life in retail and merchandising. He worked with Beyonce on her first fragrance and this was during a period when Soulja had battled cancer and won the fight while Beyonce, Michelle and Kelly were singing about needing a soldier. The timing was all right on point. SOULJA was born and so was his legendary moniker. He has worked New York Fashion Week (NYFW) for more than 20 years, opening shows or being the intermission entertainment. Soulja also worked in publishing and other numerous creative spaces that queer culture often commands.
“Ballroom speaks of resilience!” Soulja offered as we spoke about his role in guest editing this Ballroom issue. He waxed fantastic about POSE and Paris is Burning and how global the representation of vogue has become, being exhibited in The Whitney Museum and revered with international presence. Soulja is also in talks with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture about adding his costumes to their extensive collection. Born out of his capacity for audacity and an ability to see clothes and deconstruct/reconstruct them by cutting them up and creating new looks. “Today, I think kids are more trendy than creative. They all tend to look the same.” Junior LaBeija, the legendary emcee renowned for his cutthroat commanding of the stage from Paris is Burning, said in a recent interview that “our day was about IMAGINATION and today’s presentation is about HALLUCINATION.”
And on why Ballroom and queer fashion culture were so important to young Lee and why it is still imperative. “I’m still the same shy boy that I was before, but Ballroom and the club scene made me feel appreciated. No one ever told me ‘You’re Beautiful’ or any of that but when I got dressed up, all of a sudden, people wanted to take my picture. They would shout ‘You’re Beautiful.’ They wanted me to dance everywhere and they started paying me. As a teenager and into my early 20’s, the inspiration came from that, from being seen. It was like a drug. Me and my friends tried to outdo each other making the next creation. That came from the streets and us not being rich. We did everything we could and it was received well.” And Soulja delights about the fact that so much of his creative life isn’t documented in photographs because he was too busy living his best life to stop to take pretty pictures of it. But he stumbles and laughs when I ask him what the oldest creation is that he still has in his arsenal of excellence.
“Oh wow. That’s a good question. I just recently moved to Harlem from Brooklyn and I was giving things away. The kids lamented that I didn’t look like I could be retiring but I was thinking about it as I was going through stuff lately. I have to get back to you on that because now I am really thinking about that.”
And we had to speak about the NYC Center of Black Pride and his desire to collect and curate the fullness of the Harlem Drag Ball Era, especially the earliest houses who were founded in the late 60’s. Duchess La Wong, one of the icons of that era, who participated in those early pageants and helped found one of the first 5 houses, met with Lee Soulja, and he expected her to perhaps have a handful of photos from that bygone period in Black Queer History. She arrived with 2 full shopping bags of photos and this is the level of research, artifact collection and community celebration that Simmons wants to do with the NYC Center for Black Pride.
“What is Pride? It bothered me that all that stuff, Stonewall and everything, was started with people of color. People don’t know how it started and they are written out of history. What are we really proud of? Pride means more than just parties and taking off our shirts to walk down the streets. What are we marching about? It also has to mean something significant. Black Pride is about showing that we have contributed to society, we have contributed to history and we’ve contributed to popular culture. No one teaches about Black LGBTQ History. I started to change how we do the event and we started to concentrate on more cultural events, so that we celebrate us. I also wanted to create a space, an archive, where they could learn about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. And Storme’ DeLarverie,
often left out of the conversation, who was called the Rosa Parks of the Gay community. She hosted events in Harlem, emceed and really stuck her neck out for the gay men who were being harassed. I also want to work with people from around the country, so that we can learn about the first club in Detroit or the first Pride in DC or where was the event or moment in their city. Where was the first gay bar in Boston? Where did those Black gays congregate? What was that first thing!?”
Lee Soulja Simmons believes in Black Gay Culture and History so deeply that he has gotten the Governor of NY to recognize Ballroom as a culture. He has an awesome awards ceremony every year to honor the fullness of the Black Queer experience. He is working to curate a culture and when we realize that it transitions back for decades and centuries.
All of this work is an imperative for Lee Soulja who is thinking about “who am I passing this down to so they can carry the torch? My generation didn’t get to have these conversations because we were fighting through HIV/AIDS and we didn’t have time to tell these stories and gather this information. It will be a shame on us if we don’t pass this down onto the next generation. I have fought cancer and HIV and I count it a blessing that I am still this healthy and I’m still up and I am able!”
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IG: @LEESOULJA, @NYCBLACKPRIDE
Production Assistant: J LeVe
Photographer: Anja Matthes
Make-up Artist: Clark Vincent
Stylist: Jose Disla Xtravaganza
