This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Louder Than A Riot host Sidney Madden spoke with Saucy Santana about the double-edged sword of being dubbed a viral sensation, conjuring the magic of "Material Girl" to make it last and his vision for the future of rap. Quarantining queerness to "virality" can keep it from spreading and limit its reach, allowing those who would suppress it to pretend it's not already the foundation of the culture. It is saved for something powerful but also considered dangerous, something that needs containing. But traditionally, the word "virality" comes with a very specific connotation, one used for contagions. ![]() In the era of social media stardom, going viral can be a direct pipeline to overnight celebrity. And for Santana, that manifests as being treated like a joke or a trend, being told to switch up the things that make him unique - or stay backstage as hired help. For queer artists, there's another rule at play: keeping gayness at a distance by staying in your lane. The common ground that women and queer rappers share is that both are getting bigger looks than ever due to the power of virality, yet both have virality used against them like they're only good enough for 15 minutes of fame. But where Black women have been allowed to exist only in very specific spaces, in very specific ways, openly gay, openly femme Black men like Santana haven't been to exist in hip-hop at all. This double standard Santana faces rings similar to what Black women in rap also deal with. ![]() Major labels didn't know what to 'do' with Santana. But as he headed into label meetings with a full-face beat, lavishly long acrylics and a shaped-up beard, he found that the qualities that had been setting him apart were now being used against him to hold him back. With a dominating presence in the most popular new social space, Santana hoped to parlay that virality into more traditional success within the music industry - i.e. After picking up rapping on the fly in 2019, and releasing his debut single, "Walk 'Em Like a Dog," the glam City Girls associate was spreading across TikTok by 2021 with songs like "Walk," "Here We Go" and "Material Girl." While hip-hop could see the value in cashing in on Santana's social capital, there was clear hostility to his unabashedly feminine presentation. So now I got another Dominican, another Afro-Latino in the house,” La Negra explained.Old-school queerphobia still reigns in rap - from Isaiah Rashad being outed via leaked sex tape in 2022 to DaBaby's homophobic rant at Rolling Loud Festival in 2021 - but that hasn't prevented more queer rappers from taking up space and making noise, even despite a lack of infrastructural support. He’s a realtor, an investor and he was doing the same thing. Don’t just be a hot girl and have a hot girl summer, but be able to enjoy that hot girl summer 10 years from now. “I was doing investments in the Dominican Republic and I got into getting a different kind of bag. ![]() I have a new love interest this season and maybe the family is going to start growing,” she said in an interview in July. Though Amara does not make mention of the baby’s father in the article, she is rumored to be expecting with her on and off boyfriend, realtor Allan Mueses. I lost one and it was a three-week bleeding and at the end of the three weeks I was on a Love & Hip Hop Miami recording, I was recording and I felt nauseous that I thought that the food was going badly for me. Then the female instinct told me, “Take a pregnancy test” even though you just lost a pregnancy. The fact is that I did my test and it came out positive.” And what is suspected is that they were triplets and one was lost because the time was too tight. ![]() “In July I was pregnant, but unfortunately I lost it. A post shared by A M A R A "LA NEGRA" Negra also shared that she suffered a miscarriage over the summer.
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