MC Lyte has offered some new insight into her personal life, opening up about her divorce, finding new love, and even the validity behind the rumors about her sexuality.
The iconic Brooklyn rapper appeared on The Breakfast Club on Thursday (August 8), amid a press tour supporting both her forthcoming album 1 Of 1 and a special event in Brooklyn that saw her receive a key to the city.
Near the end of the hour-long conversation, Charlamagne tha God asked Lyte how she felt about her business being discussed in public, referring to the coverage around her divorce, which she settled last year, nearly three years after she and former husband John Wyche split.
“I don’t know that it bothered me so much, I just love having the opportunity to get [my truth] told,” she said starting at the 51:30 mark. “So at that point, you’ve said whatever you wanna say; I get to say whatever I wanna say. Which, was really difficult back in the day, to be able to give your opinion, very straight forward. We had no platform that we could technically use. And so, yeah, say what you want and then I’ll say what I want.”
She continued: “Now you can just write what you wanna write, put it up and people can have it. So when the whole divorce thing happened, I just saw all of this stuff that said, “‘He was tryna get this,’ or, ‘She got to keep her…’ It’s not ‘She got to keep,’ he as never trying to do that, we had a prenup, he’s got his own stuff I’m sure that he was happy that I didn’t want any part of it.
“And so, we made an agreement very early on that we’d have a prenup and that would be it. I just didn’t like the turn that they were takin’. But it’s not like I didn’t expect it: anything to get a click, people will say. So I just was happy that I was able to set the record straight.”
The conversation soon turned to the rumors about her sexuality, with MC Lyte even calling out Breakfast Club co-host Jess Hilarious as one of the people who were surprised to find out that she had been married to begin with.
And while she stopped short of providing details, the “Cha Cha Cha” rapper admitted that the public perception that she might have been a lesbian was not completely unfounded.
“When I said, ‘People will say that you like something before you even know what you like? My biggest thing with the younger generation is, don’t be so prepared to put yourself in a box,” she offered. “You’re learning. Life is what it is, coming out of teens into your 20s, you’re seeing things; I had to learn much later on in life: everything you think, doesn’t need to happen. It can be a thought and stay there. Everything that you see other people do, doesn’t have to be the life for you.
“Growing up as an only child, things are impressionable. So for me to be able to choose my life for myself, is extremely important. So, did it bother me? Perhaps in the beginning. But then it just became, ‘Oh okay. If that’s how you wanna feel.’”
Lyte added: “And that’s not saying that those types of things didn’t happen in my life. But that’s not all of who I am. When you’re young, especially in this business, you think it? ‘Okay, let’s make that happen.’ The sad part about it is, many people get stuck there, right? They’re stuck with what it is that other people want them to be, or are comfortable with them being. ‘You can’t possibly look like that, and want to be with a man or find men attractive.
“Me getting married… First off, I’m way more traditional than anybody would assume. So me getting married was because I believe in the sanctity of marriage, of partnership. And it not working was devastating for me. But it also called to action me being responsible for the way that I speak, for the way that I behave; and being accountable for someone else’s feelings.”
In January 2023, MC Lyte soft-launched her new relationship with an Instagram post celebrating the arrival of the new year. But the media didn’t seem to catch wind of the new couple until Super Bowl Sunday, when she posted herself and her man in matching San Francisco 49ers jerseys, which she captioned, “My boo, my love [heart emoji].”
According to Essence, the rapper’s partner is tech professional Aaron Johnson, who she allegedly met at a philanthropic event, where the two “connected over their love of community work.
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The 53-year-old, born Lana Moorer, gushed about her new love during her chat with the Power 105.1 crew.
“The say you call in who it is that you are. I’m a much better person, so who I have called in is a reflection of that,” she told Charlamagne and DJ Envy. “And I love him. Are we in a hurry to get married? No: he’s been married and divorced, I’ve been married and divorced; so being married isn’t the thing that we’re all jumping in to be in once you’ve experienced it.”
She concluded: “But it is something that we’re working towards. And he’s so totally different from a roughneck. And he’s really a ray of sunshine and so different from any type that I’ve ever been with. And so, I had to learn that that’s okay.”
Check out the full interview below.
