The 26-year-old dance music producer, engineer, mixer and DJ – who toured the United States with the late Avicii in 2014 – has publicly spoken about his sexuality for the first time in a coming out essay for Billboard. “I am gay.
It’s so much easier to say today than it was even a few years ago,” he wrote. “While I have never publicly denied this part of me, I have also never spoken out about it.
I will no longer live in fear.” The San Francisco-based artist said he lived in a “heteronormative community” in Dallas, where gay people were considered “mystical creatures” and anti-gay slurs were constantly thrown around.