Jamaican reggae star Beenie Man, who achieved international stardom and infamy with songs that have included violently homophobic lyrics, has come out with a new video.

In the remarkable new clip, Beenie Man (Anthony Moses Davis) literally begs for forgiveness for his past sins, disavowing older songs with lyrics such as "Hang chi chi gal wid a long piece of rope" and "Tek a bazooka and kill batty-fucker".

Beenie Man said: "I respect each and every human being, regardless of which race or creed, regardless of which religious belief you believe in, and regardless of which sexual preference you are, including gays and lesbian people," he said:

There is no one in this world is the same as they were 20 years ago – I know I am not. I was a kid and I come from Waterhouse, which is a small community. I never know what the world is like and what the world is all about. But now I know that people live in this world that live their life differently from my life. I still have to respect and love human beings.

With this seemingly heartfelt apology, the self-styled King of Dancehall joins a growing number of prominent musicians – notably in the often swaggeringly macho and homophobic rap world (a generalization, perhaps, but a hard one to refute) – to come out in support of gay rights.

Earlier this week Jay-Z, one of the most popular rappers of all time, unequivocally voiced his endorsement of Obama's decision to support gay marriage, framing it as a civil rights issue. Rappers Bun B, half of the acclaimed Houston hip-hop duo UGK, and TI each separately echoed Hova's remarks.

"It just goes to show that pop musicians aren't so different from politicians in that they're going to follow their audiences," Jeff Chang, author of the definitive hip hop history Can't Stop, Won't Stop, told the Guardian.

"All these folks are getting older too, so the question of relevance is important to them, and obviously the mainstream has shifted from a hypermasculinity to more accepting of difference."

Like the president, it seems much of America has "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage. True, on May 8 voters in North Carolina approved a state amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman as the only legal union.

But a Public Policy Polling survey released on Thursday showed that 55% of black voters in the state support either gay marriage or civil unions with only 39% against any sort of recognition – an 11-point jump from a May 6 poll.

The evolution will be televised

In his response this week to President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, Jay-Z threw his own support behind equality. In an interview that aired on CNN, the hip-hop entrepreneur said:

It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination plain and simple … I think [announcing support of gay marriage is] the right thing to do, so whether it costs [Obama] votes or not – again, it's not about votes. It's about people. It's the right thing to do as a human being.

Here you have one of the most successful and influential figures in pop music taking a stand that flies in the face of so much of what his art has embodied. Even Jay-Z's own catalogue is rife with gay slurs: on Nigga What, Nigga Who from 1999 he raps: "Faggots wanna talk to po-po's/Smoke em like cocoa."

On Brooklyn (Go Hard), Jay raps: "Boom bye-bye, like Buju I'm crucial", a clear reference to Buju Banton's 1992 Boom Bye Bye, in which the reggae star advocates shooting homosexuals in the head ("Boom bye bye Inna batty bwoy head"). Banton was dropped from his label, but Jay-Z still considered him "crucial."

Houston's Bun B took to YouTube shortly after Jay-Z came out in support of gay marriage to tell his fans he agrees with him, and to ask for their own opinions.

"I myself have no issue one way or the other. Whatever people want to do it's totally up to them because I don't want anybody telling me what i can and can't do," he said. Then he added what can only be called a grown-up "no homo": "Just for the record I'm married to a woman."

His fans, however, were not quite as evolved. (One suggested that all gay people should be banished to an Ikea-furnished island.)

Speaking on the popular New York hip hop radio station Hot 97 Wednesday TI, another Texas native, similarly voiced a live-and-let-live stance.

"If it doesn't affect you, then what difference does it make what other people are doing with their lives?" he asked rhetorically. "I think that you should be able to do whatever you want to do. I don't see how it matters one way or another."

It is also notable that this rash of support for the gay community should come immediately on the heels of the president's historic embrace.

"It could be a coincidence but it seems more the case that once Obama – as the most prominent African American in the world arguably – decided to finally speak on this, it gave license to others to follow," Oliver Wang, a music writer and assistant professor of sociology at CSU Long Beach, wrote in an email to the Guardian.

"Not to be cynical but there's also a pragmatic angle here too: young people, overwhelmingly, support LGBT rights and if these artists want to stay relevant with their audience, they can't afford to express the same kind of homophobia that may have existed in earlier generations."

Indeed, last year rapper Fat Joe said as much in an interview in which he joked that hip-hop was controlled by a secret gay mafia. In an on-camera chat, Fat Joe said he had no doubt that he's recorded with gay rappers and that there were just as assuredly gay athletes in the NFL and NBA.

"Why wouldn't a guy come out and say 'Yo, I'm gay', and get that type of love?" he said. "Everybody got somebody gay in their family."

One artist who is openly gay and gaining momentum in his career is Freddie Ross, who performs a style of New Orleans hip hop called bounce music as Big Freedia. He's felt a tectonic shift in his industry's culture since starting out.

"It was an issue for me when I first started. We had a lot of bumps in the road where people were not very accepting of our walk of life," he told the Guardian.

"The world is really changing and a lot of people are close to gay people or have gay friends. It's exciting to see the change and be a part of the process and to be a voice that's being heard," Big Freedia said, adding, simply: "I'm very, very overwhelmed behind it."