5 Female Rappers Infected With HIV

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]So, like, when they told me, "Did you know you have AIDS?" I'm just kind of like, "What?"

[00:00:04]>> HIV does not care who you are, how famous you are, or how untouchable you feel, and the hip-hop world is not exempt from that reality. Five women connected to this culture found that out the hard way, and the internet has been getting their stories completely wrong ever since. Mykki Blanco. When people talk about rappers and HIV, Mykki Blanco is the one name that actually has receipts. Born Michael Quattlebaum Jr.

[00:00:28]on April 2nd, 1986 in Orange County, California, Mykki is a rapper, performance artist, poet, and activist who built a career blending queer hip-hop with punk, riot grrrl, and underground art culture, releasing projects like Cosmic Angel, The Illuminati Prince / SS, and racking up collaborations with Charli XCX, Teyana Taylor, and Madonna. The whole time, though, he was carrying something that most people in his position would have kept buried. In June 2015, Mykki posted on Facebook and told the world he had been HIV positive since 2011, meaning his entire career up to that point [music] was built while living with the virus in secret. He said he worried that coming out about his status would cost him everything he had worked for, but staying silent had its own cost. So, I was like, "You know what? Maybe I should actually talk about in a song being HIV positive." So, I wrote "You Don't Know Me," and one of the key lines of that song is "Buzzing down the block, I guess you heard the news. I'm running through the city like a predator. I'm burning dudes." It happens, and what can I do?

[00:01:25]We live in the age of transparency.

[00:01:27]>> [music] >> The more that people feel they know something intimate about you, that creates this kind of bond because it's like, "Did I have to tell people that?"

[00:01:33]No.

[00:01:33]But what kind of life is that? You know what I mean? What kind of living is that? That's not living. That's living in the shadows. That creates a psychosis of darkness, and that'll you up.

[00:01:42]That level of honesty is what [music] separates Mykki from almost everyone else in this conversation. He did not wait for a leak or a lawsuit. He chose to speak on his own terms, and then he kept making music. His 2021 album Broken Hearts and Beauty Sleep and his 2022 project stay close to music both came after his disclosure and he graduated with an MFA in 2024.

[00:02:05]He has written for Vogue and Dazed, toured the world multiple [music] times and continued building a body of work that would have been remarkable even without everything he was carrying. The diagnosis did not slow him down or define him in the way people might expect. It became one layer of a much larger story. Kezia Johnson Kezia Johnson is not a rapper but her story runs directly through the rap world and it is one of the most gut-punching ones in this entire conversation. She was a music executive and brand specialist who worked with major record labels. The kind of woman who was plugged into the industry and building something real for herself while also being in a committed three-year relationship with a man she completely trusted. That man was a well-known Houston area rapper and he was HIV positive and said absolutely [music] nothing to her. In December 2006 at just 22 years old Kezia collapsed in a friend's shower. She went to the doctor and was sent home with a respiratory infection diagnosis. [music] That was wrong. She got sicker, ran a fever of 105° and her aunt rushed her to the hospital.

[00:03:07]After almost a month of testing doctors told her she did not just have HIV, she had full-blown AIDS with only two T-cells left in her body. Well, diagnosed on >> [music] >> December 6th, 2006 but ended up getting sicker and having a fever of 105.

[00:03:25]Then I was rushed to the hospital by a family member, my aunt to be exact.

[00:03:30][music] And after being in the hospital for almost a month they then tell me that I have AIDS and I only had two T-cells which is why I passed [music] out because my pneumonia, PCP pneumonia had took over my body. What she did next is what makes her story unforgettable. By May of 2007, less than six months after her diagnosis and while she was still physically recovering, she was already giving her first public speaking engagement. She had lost close to 100 pounds from wasting disease, the kind of physical deterioration that happens in late stage AIDS, and she still stood up in front of rooms full of people and told them exactly what had happened to her. She later published a book called Dying to be Diva and became a national HIV educator, traveling city to city, speaking at schools, doing panels, changing the way people in her community understood this disease. As of this video, she is healthy, undetectable, and raising a daughter. Maria Davis Maria [music] Davis was the kind of woman hip-hop gravitates toward naturally. A former model and music promoter, she was [music] embedded in the culture from the ground up, the person running the rooms where careers got started. She was present during the birth of Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt era, running a venue night called Mad Wednesdays that became a genuine proving ground for New York talent. But in 1995, her life shifted in a direction she never anticipated. Maria found out she was HIV positive through a life insurance application. She had applied for a $100,000 policy to protect her two children, took the required HIV test without a second thought, and 10 days later received a denial letter telling her to seek help immediately.

[00:05:05]>> No, I found out through a life insurance [music] policy. So, I took the test willingly. I was like, "Oh, come on.

[00:05:10]That's a white gay man's disease." And never thought [music] that I was vulnerable and that I was infected. And so, I found out 10 days later, they sent [music] me back uh my denial application and saying, "You know, dear Ms. Davis, we're sorry to inform you, but you need to seek help. You have the HIV antibody in [music] your bloodstream." She had contracted the virus from her fiance, the man she was planning to marry. For 3 years after her diagnosis, she refused medication, caught between denial and a distrust of the medical system that is common in black communities for reasons rooted in real history. By the time she started [music] treatment, the HIV had already progressed to AIDS with her T-cell count sitting at just three. She came out publicly about her status in the year 2000 and has not stopped talking since. Today, she is undetectable, still running [music] Mad Wednesdays in Harlem, and conducting HIV testing at the venue. Her T-cell count is now above 500, a number that would have been unimaginable in those early years when she was sitting at three. She serves as an ambassador for amfAR, has partnered with BET's Rap It Up campaign, and has dedicated decades of her life to making sure the hip-hop industry takes this conversation seriously. Her whole point is that the music brought her to those rooms, [music] and she is using those same rooms to save lives. Gina Tune Gina Tune is a model and social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, and her story [music] became one of the most watched HIV disclosure moments of 2023. She is not a rapper, but she has been open about moving in celebrity and entertainment [music] circles. And the way her diagnosis unfolded is a sobering reminder of how fast this virus moves when it goes undetected. Gina was [music] diagnosed with HIV in 2021, but because it went untreated, it progressed to full-blown AIDS before doctors caught it. She described a period where her body started giving out in ways she could not explain, bowel problems she could not control, running headfirst [music] into walls on her way to the bathroom, losing the ability to walk down her own hallway. Multiple doctors told her nothing was wrong. By the time she reached the hospital, she was so far gone that doctors pulled her mother aside twice [music] and told her to start making funeral arrangements. They were telling my mother that she's not going to make it. You got to get [music] funeral arrangements ready for her, and they told her that twice. And I didn't even know.

[00:07:24]I just was so not there that [music] I just didn't know, and then I just I don't know. I just strive. That's the one thing that just keeps me going. It's like, I got to try harder today. She also lost her sister during her recovery, a loss that cut especially deep because her sister had been her loudest supporter all the way through.

[00:07:39]Gina has since become undetectable and continues to document her journey on Tik Tok and Instagram, [music] using her platform to push back against the stigma and misinformation that still surrounds HIV, particularly the idea that it only happens to people who are careless or reckless. Her message is simple. It can happen to anyone, and avoiding the doctor is the most dangerous thing you can do.

[00:07:59]>> [music] >> Sexyy Red.

[00:08:01]Now, this last one is different from every other story on this list, and it is important to be up front about what is actually confirmed here versus what is just the internet running wild. Sexyy Red, born Janae Wherry, is a chart-topping rapper out of St. Louis, known for Pound Town and Ski Yee, and she has not confirmed being HIV positive. What she has confirmed, simply by existing at the center of more viral controversy than almost any other rapper active right now, is that her name keeps showing up [music] in these conversations, whether she invites it or not. The allegations have come from multiple directions. Her baby's father made public accusations about STDs.

[00:08:37]Various people in feuds have claimed she has been spreading infections. Her lip gloss line became the center of memes that this video does not need to repeat.

[00:08:45]And on the other side, Sexyy [music] herself has been caught up in counter narratives with clips and posts suggesting she has been calling out rappers and public figures for allegedly hiding their own HIV status. None of it is confirmed. Not her status, not the people she allegedly named, none of it.

[00:09:01]What is actually happening here is that Sexyy Red became a lightning rod for every fear and accusation that hip hop has quietly been sitting on about HIV and sexual health for years. all of that anxiety and aimed it directly at her, and the result is a cycle of speculation that says far more about how we talk about this disease than it does about her personally. HIV stigma is the engine behind all of it, the same stigma that makes people whisper instead of get tested, and that allows a woman's name to be dragged through allegations with zero medical evidence while everyone treats it like established fact. The four women before her on this list went through the reality of this disease and came out the other side still standing.

[00:09:39]Sexy Red Section is here because her story represents the internet's version of this conversation and the internet's version is almost always the least accurate one. Which of the names on this list shocked you the most? Drop your thoughts in the comments and click on one of the cards to see more videos like this. See you in the next one.