A couple of years ago Qboy appeared, and was pasted across the media as the acceptable gay, white rapper, confronting homophobic hip hop, but as I wait outside his plush South London apartment as he get dressed, images of a white 50 Cent in a vest are soon dashed.

In recent years though he has been combining regular performances in club night Discotec, often with fellow gay rapper DJ mistermaker, at venues like The End in Central London, with performances and pride appearances, including a "ghetto bus", at Brighton's Gay Pride. All this is in order to develop as an artist, as opposed to his magazine front cover image as the "pretty, young, white boy."

His recent tour in the United States, to help promote the documentary film 'Pick Up The Mic,' in which he appears, has helped create a profile for him stateside, taking him around cities such as Chicago and New York.

"Pick Up The Mic" is an attempt to capture what the website calls "an unapologetic underground music movement just as it explodes into the mainstream - defying the music industry's most homophobic genre in the process."

For Qboy, the film represents something different. The screening allowed him to reconnect with the crew he performs with, a family to which he feels tied both as an artist and because its "nice to feel part of something."

It has also allowed him to work on a music video for Q.B.O.Y. with Australian director Jarrah Gurrie, who talent-spotted him while watching the documentary.

That is the key to Qboy's perspective and music, an open music scene that anybody can dip into, and to understand this is good to look at where his music comes from.

He started off by getting into groups such as Salt'n'Pepper, and due to a lack of gay male role models, saw a connection with what he describes as"feminists in a misogynistic art form."

Qboy first heard their mix of pop and hip hop in their 1991 greatest hits album, he quickly excuses the purchase claiming that "everyone in school was buying it."

This attraction to S&P means that he now owns their entire back catalogue, and he recently thrilled at appearing in the top sixteen Myspace friends on the S&P site.

He drew more than just enjoyment from their music. He saw his role models perform not just in AIDS education campaigns, but also create a more open and pop-friendly style of hip hop.

The self proclaimed "Rapper For People Who Think They Don't Like Rap" was bullied as a child, harassed through both primary and secondary school because he'd rather play with girls than play football.

"Later when in college I was ready to express myself by being excessively loud and gay and in your face," he says, and this included enjoying himself by intimidating straight guys, though he admits that he has calmed down in recent years.

It is his love for performance that led him to DJ mistermaker, and so began his life as a rap artist, making use of rhymes and words that he had written in school.

The experience of being bullied in school, despite never being open about his sexuality in school, led to a request to take part in a Channel4 documentary on openly gay schoolchildren. He jumped at the chance.

Qboy has begun campaigning for better education in schools on issues such as homosexuality and homophobia, and he believes that as a person who can communicate in a socially respected art form, he can make a difference.

He also points out that it is often just artists continuing to say what they have said previously in their songs, as opposed to their beliefs, that can result in being homophobic - to keep the money rolling in due to their macho image, "they want to keep the gangsta' image."

This is cache, read story here