An 11-year-old rapper sets the record straight… and cis… and transphobic.

“If you are a Suzie, you can’t be a Scott. I know it’s a doozy—can’t be what you’re not,” Toby James raps in the song. The TikTok video for the song, titled “Still Two Genders” went viral last week on his father’s TikTok account, in which both the video and the account are now deleted. Before it was deleted, the TikTok was saved and posted on X by a commentator, with now almost 8 million views.

The song is a remix of his father’s original song, initially released over a year ago called “2 Genders.” The pre-teen is the son of Tyson James, also a rapper who describes himself on his YouTube channel as a Christian Conservative hip-hop artist “that puts God first!”

On his channel are a slew of music videos of his original music, almost all of them extremely conservative and antagonistic of LGBTQ people. One song is titled “Demon Month,” wherein the thumbnail is a pickup truck skidding over a rainbow road, alluding to Pride month. Another is titled “Gun Totin Bible Thumper,” in which the music video reveals James waving several guns.

In “Still Two Genders,” the 11-year-old raps: “I look around, I see a circus. All of these trannies are making me nervous.”

Despite the blatant use of the slur against trans people, the same clip but on Instagram has garnered an outstandingly supportive crowd in the comments. With over 1,600 likes on Instagram, the number one comment on the post reads: “My son wanted nail polish because he saw his sissy putting on nail polish guess what I told him… NO nail polish is for girls and guess what he said… OK! and that was that lol 😂”

However, the second highest comment critiques the father, saying “Isn’t this a perfect example of grooming kids into an ideology?” to which the father responds with: “It’s a perfect example of brainwashing kids with truth,” garnering the same number of likes.

A 2023 Report to the Nation survey by Brian Levin revealed that negative rhetoric like this song is what directly causes hate crimes against the community.

User @actingliketommy, a self-proclaimed “political punk” took it to X to criticize not only the song, but Christians at large. “The funny thing about faux-Christians and their faux-hell is the very mention of it always outs them: all their talk about grace and love is just a cover for the glee they feel when they harbor the idea of people other than them suffering. They’re spiteful and toxic to the core,” he posted, later adding “I’d rather burn in hell than listen to this.”

Another critic pointed out the fact that despite the pre-teen being at the forefront of the song, the impact of the message might not necessarily fall on him and his responsibility. “I know for a fact little bro did not write these himself,” the user @alreadyademon35 said. In response, the rapper’s father said, “It was me 🙋🏻‍♂️,” admitting that his son is rapping lyrics written by him.

Overall, the viral song is a small piece of the larger puzzle that is the ongoing movement against LGBTQ justice.

According to Dr. Lauron Kehrer, as conversations and visibility around LGBTQ issues arise more and more, so will the pushback against the movement—particularly from those who are conservative and therefore maybe listen to this genre of music.

“I think it’s important to note that this song is a reflection of broader transphobia in our society,” said Kehrer, who is the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at Irving S. Gilmore School of Music in Western Michigan University. They are also the author of Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures Communities, and Contemporary Performance.

The rise of country hip-hop, Christian hip-hop and conservative lyricism does not have the backing of the mainstream industry, though it doesn’t undermine the fact that genre is thriving.

“It’s rap but made largely by white guys from the rural South,” David Peisner wrote in Rolling Stone in 2018. “Songs about jacked-up trucks, drinking, mudding and other virtues of so-called redneck life are standard, and rants extolling the virtues of the Confederate flag and the Second Amendment aren’t uncommon.”

Kehrer believes that the increase of visibility of queer, trans and nonbinary people recently has been in tandem with the surge of backlash, evident in the large number of anti-trans laws proposed and enacted in states across the country.

“Of course, cultural expressions like music are sometimes going to reflect that,” Kerher said, suggesting a focus on careers of LGBTQ musicians and uplifting their platforms instead of harmful voices. “It’s one thing to have adults engaging in hateful content, but to have children from such a young age mimicking their parents’ hateful speech is especially concerning.”