Tevin Campbell Gets Candid About Embracing His Sexuality

Tevin Campbell says he never hid who he was, he was just on a journey of self-discovery that included himself and those closest to him.

For the first time, the R&B singer, known for his sultry ‘90s songs “I’m Ready” and “Can We Talk,” is getting candid about being a gay man in the music industry and fully embracing who he is.

Campbell broke out on the scene when he was 12 years old, forging a successful music career thanks to mentors like Benny Medina Quincy Jones. Entering his late teens and 20’s, he said in an interview with “People Every Day podcast,” “I knew my sexuality, but I didn’t think of the representation that I didn’t see in the business. I didn’t think about those things.”

“When I came out to my family and friends (at) about 19 or 20, that was it for me. And then I went on the road of discovering myself. I didn’t know who I was,” he shared.

That journey included moving to New York to perform in the Broadway musical “Hairspray” in 2004, where he “grew up a lot.”

“That was a great time in my life,” he said. “LGBTQ+ people that were living normal lives and had partners. I had never seen that. That was pleasing to me, and they were great people. I was never around that. So that gave me this whole outlook on the world.”

Over the years there have been rumors and speculation about his sexuality. However, Campbell said it never affected him during the height of his fame because he was “very much protected. There was no social media back then.”

“I didn’t hide anything about me. I was me. I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t try to act a certain way or anything,” he said, adding that during that time, “You just couldn’t be (gay) back then.”

Earlier this year, Campbell said, people thought he seemingly confirmed his sexuality when he replied to a person on Twitter questioning if he was gay. He replied in a since-deleted tweet, “Tevin is…” with a rainbow emoji.

“It was a casual thing for me,” he said, noting that people took it as his coming out when it wasn’t the case. “I love my fans, but what they think about me and my sexuality is of no importance to me.”

“That’s the problem to me, when we can get to the place in society, especially Black folks, where somebody can just (easily) say, ‘You know, yeah, I’m gay,’” he said. “Every person in the world isn’t straight. Get over it. When you get to a point in your life where you love yourself so much and you don’t give a damn what people think or say about you, that feels so good.”

With more queer Black artists like Frank Ocean and Lil Nas X visible, Campbell said he hated that it wasn’t like that in the ‘90s. However, he admitted that he “wouldn’t have been prepared” when he was a kid “to be a spokesperson of the LGBTQ+ community.” “But I’m glad that it’s changing because there are a lot of kids, especially young Black boys, that need to see representation.”

Getting back into music after a brief hiatus, Campbell said that what makes him the happiest is “the fact that I’ve embraced me.”

“Because I used to beat myself up over little things,” he said. “If you’re 45 and you’re still beating yourself up for your faults … that’s not a good thing. Love yourself.”