Mykki Blanco

Anthony Obst

I have the pleasure of introducing a groundbreaking and fearless artist sitting next to me here tonight, who also has been calling Lisbon home for a couple of years now. So please join me in welcoming Mykki Blanco. [applause]

So Mykki, you said you haven’t listened to that track in a while. It is from your first mixtape Cosmic Angel. It’s called “Mendocino California,” by the way. And you recorded this in 2012 in New York. Can you tell us a little bit about that place at the time, also from the perspective of you sort of being an artist trying to forge a path?

Mykki Blanco

So, hi guys. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you, Red Bull, for inviting me. This is cool. OK. So in 2012, I had been living in New York City since like 2008. I had dropped out of college twice, and I was basically hustling. I was interning for a lot of artists. I worked at this really cool store that was like half of a skate shop, half of a bookstore.

And at the time, I was pretty much trying to figure out a way to become a successful contemporary artist. I had always imagined that I would make things, that I would make sculptures or installations. And what happened once I moved to... Because I had this romantic idea about being a visual artist. And so what happened was that, when I was in New York, I was just so poor all the time that I couldn’t really afford materials. So it’s like... And I also couldn’t afford studio space... So it was like me wanting to be this artist and never having any money to buy paint or anything. And then also, it just wasn’t working.

And so I remember I was having this conversation with my mom, and my mom was just like, “You know, honey, I’m not trying to be down on you. I’m not trying to be down on your dreams.” But she was like, “You were always a much better writer than you were...” She was like, “I always liked your writing much more than any of the visual art that I’ve really seen you make. I’m just being honest with you. I’m your mom.” She was like, “You’re just... You’re a much better writer.” And I was kind of resisting that for a while, and then I just... I kind of was like, “You know, maybe I should start writing again.” And so I started writing again a lot, and it was true. Through the writing, I started to create these little narratives and just all of these kind of satellite ideas. And one day, I had the idea for a performance art piece about a girl who was a young black girl in America and she wanted to be... She was a teenager. Well, she was like 18. And she wanted to be a famous female rapper, but she was really rebellious and really radical and basically my own personality traits put into this character.

And so that was the birth of Mykki Blanco. So when I started Mykki Blanco, I did not start Mykki Blanco with the intention of being a musical artist. When I would think about the projects that I was making, when I made what you just listened to, which I recorded on my laptop, that wasn’t made to be on Spotify. That was... In my head at that time, that was something that, if you had to walk into a gallery or you walked into a museum one day, you would have heard that playing. And so I just... Everything at that time that I thought of, I thought of in the context of contemporary art. And it wasn’t until I met a guy named Charlie Damga, and Charles had a record label. He was a young guy and he had a record label called UNO NYC. And he had come to some of my shows because I had started performing out as Mykki. And he had come to some of my shows, and one time he stopped me and he was like, “Would you like to have a meeting?” And I was like, “Sure. A meeting about what?” And he said, “Well, whether you know it or not, you’re actually making music.” And I was like, “Oh OK. That’s cool.” And then he was like, “Would you ever consider putting out a release?” And I was like, “A release of what?” And he was like, “Well, what you’re doing is music. You’re creating these songs.” And he was like, “What if you put all of these songs that you’re creating on one record and released it?” And I was like, “OK. That sounds like a great idea. Yeah, let’s try it.”

So it was through working with Charles that I started to ever even conceive of what I was doing as music, and it was also through Charles that I started to understand that these ideas that I was having that combined theater and performance art and gender performance, that these were things that could fit under this umbrella of being a musical artist. And this was really like... This was kind of like a really breakthrough moment for me, because I started to perform shows, I started to get paid for these shows, and this was all just… I was just having this conversation with a woman that DJs with me about intention and about how, with a lot of younger artists now who have grown up with social media... How can I put this? You have like a 21-year-old, and I actually know a person who’s like this, someone who’s 21 who had their first release at 18, their second release at 19, and now at 21 they have like two agents and they’re doing it. You know what I mean? They’re literally full-on at the beginning of their career, at 21, and they’re not with a major label. They’re a completely independent artist. But that person has always had the intention of that being... That person obviously wanted to be a musician. They wanted to... Or they wanted to attain some level of fame or notoriety and they understood the blueprint to do that. And so that was their intention and they were able to manifest that.

This whole entire thing, this whole entire career that I’ve had, at least in the very nucleus of it, the very beginning of it, was so organic in that I did not have these intentions, and I truthfully did not have them. I had intentions of being a successful, kind of maybe cult contemporary artist, and that was really it. I didn’t think about myself as someone who had the intentions of being a famous musician or of going on world tours or even doing music videos. So when all of this happened or really began to happen, it was... How can I put this? Not to sound weird, but I really come from an underground background, like really underground. So when all of this kind of started to happen, it really shifted my whole entire idea of what was possible for me as a human.

Anthony Obst

Do we want to play a video that maybe illustrates that a little bit from one of the No Fear performances?

Mykki Blanco

Oh OK. Yeah. So... OK. So…

Anthony Obst

Or do you want to say something about it first?

Mykki Blanco

Well, I was going to say so what you’re about to watch is... So before I had the idea for Mykki Blanco, I had this punk poetry project called No Fear. I had written all these poems and this art gallery had published my poems in this book. And I started to perform the poems with a bassist, and then I would also make these weird crunchy, noisy things. And so, yeah. So I had this project called No Fear, and this was about three years before Mykki Blanco, or two years maybe.

Anthony Obst

OK. Let’s watch a little bit of that. Bear with me here too...

(video: No Fear – “From The Silence of Duchamp To Noise of Boys”)

Mykki Blanco

Really very noisy.

Anthony Obst

OK. So this was around 2010, No Fear. So you were performing some of the poems you had written, also as part of this performance?

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. Those were... What I would do is basically... I had written this poetry book, but it’s like... At the time, I was like who... I had this poetry book, I’m passionate about it, but who reads poetry? So I had the idea to put it to noise music and, yeah, I would perform a majority of the poems like that.

Anthony Obst

And in terms of... So from what I picked up, someone who kind of inspired you with that also in a way was Patti Smith, of her kind of putting her poems to music. I guess you can also kind of hear a little bit of a Suicide vibe on some of what you were going for. Can you talk a little bit about people who inspired you around then?

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. I was super... Around this time, I was very inspired by Suicide, definitely inspired by Patti Smith, but more inspired by Suicide. And Suicide were Alan Vega and Martin Rev, and they were basically two weirdos from New York City in the ’70s that started to make this kind of extremely, extremely aggressive noise music that was this comment... It was a lot of things, but really it had a lot to do with this whole anti... It was like anti-disco, anti-punk, proto-punk. They would do stuff like they would take a chain and actually whip their audience with it. You know what I mean? That kind of thing, that kind of agitator stuff. And I just... But they had this music. Their music is really hard and really noisy, but then also there’s something almost doo-wop about some of the songs, like Frankie Teardrop. Also, they used a lot of early synthesizer and stuff like that.

So yeah, I was really influenced by this lineage of... The movement is called No Wave, which is these are these bands and these acts that came out of New York City that were pre-punk, pre... Pre-punk. Yeah. I would say proto-punk.

Anthony Obst

Proto-punk.

Mykki Blanco

Or no. Or post. No. Really proto.

Anthony Obst

That was more proto, yeah.

Mykki Blanco

Proto. Yeah.

Anthony Obst

So can you also say maybe a few words about the people who you were performing with? Because I think DJ Physical Therapy was also a part of that and maybe…

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. So at the time, in New York City, my friend Daniel, he was on drums and he has a record label now called Allergy Season. His artist name is DJ Physical Therapy. And then the other person that was with me is another friend of mine who’s a contemporary artist now. His name is Jeffrey Joyal, and he was on bass. And we were like a little thing for a moment.

But also, during this time period... See, and this is like... You can never like... You always have to let people in on the truth, not the illusion. So at this time, my mentor was this guy Aaron Bondaroff, and he had a gallery with a guy named Al Moran. The gallery still exists. It’s called... At the time, it was called OHWOW, but now it’s just called Moran, Moran.

And anyway, they were a gallery, and they were a new gallery. And they were trying to get all this respect in the art world. And so they would use this publicist in New York City, which is a really huge fashion publicist called Black Frame. And so when I came out with my book with them, it went through their publicity channel. And so if you... Before Mykki Blanco, if you ever just Google my name, Michael David Quattlebaum Jr., I started to kind of get attention as being a young writer and a poet through kind of this whole little media machine that they had going on. And so it would kind of... It would be untruthful to say that, when I began Mykki Blanco, people didn’t already kind of, in New York at least, know who I was. You know what I mean? There was a nucleus there of something happening. I didn’t just come out of nowhere. You know what I mean? These situations are very much so often about who you end up knowing or someone who ends up knowing you way back when.

Anthony Obst

Yeah. I think that speaks to also just kind of how those scenes were sort of connected, right, and the art forms? And so you mentioned you were doing poetry at that time. You were starting to get into performing music. Were you also still doing performance art and acting sort of around that time? Because I believe that’s sort of where you started in a way also creatively. So maybe…

Mykki Blanco

Oh, you mean real super, way, way back.

Anthony Obst

Well, maybe trace that trajectory for us, if that was something you were still kind of doing then when you got to New York.

Mykki Blanco

OK. So I was doing performance art, but I wasn’t really doing acting anymore. But what he’s basically talking about is... I was a child actor, but not in Hollywood or something. At the time, we lived in North Carolina. So in North Carolina, in this town called Wilmington, there used to be these film studios called Screen Gems. And what was a really big show there? OK. So one of the big TV shows that were filmed at Screen Gems was... Do you all remember hearing about a show called Dawson’s Creek? So Dawson’s Creek was filmed at Screen Gems. A couple of movies were. So there… And anyway, so I was a part of this thing in my hometown in Raleigh called Kids on Broadway. And we were basically little drama freaks, and we were doing musicals and all this stuff. And I remember one of the girls in our group ended up getting an agent and she was in a CBS movie, and I was just like, “Well, I want an agent too.”

I always make jokes with my mom because usually in these situations the parents are really pushing the kids, and it was the complete opposite. I would get the newspaper like I was some 30-year-old out of work actor and I was like 12 years old. I would get the newspaper... I would search the newspaper for auditions. And then if I saw something that was for kids, I would circle it and ask my mom, “Mommy, can you take me?”

And so she would. If she had the time, if she wasn’t working, if it was the weekend, she would. And so yeah, I was a kid actor. And I think one of the biggest things... One of the two biggest things I did was this off-Broadway play about Eleanor Roosevelt, and then the other thing was I was in this... I was like a... What do they call it? A stand-in. So there was this main kid who was the kid actor and I was the stand-in. But the other biggest thing I did was I was in this Oprah Winfrey television movie called The Wedding, and it starred Halle Berry and a couple of other... Lynn Whitfield, a couple of other really notable black American actors, and it was filmed in North Carolina. And... Oh, you’re about to show that.

Anthony Obst

I’m about to show it.

Mykki Blanco

About to show the photo. So this is from my child actor days. But this is... I guess it’s really telling because it’s like I did always... I have always liked performing. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked performing. And even when I was kind of on this trip about really wanting to be a contemporary artist, there was still this element of performance. I just never would have thought, though, that... Because really also, another dimension of what ended up happening with Mykki Blanco was that this idea for Mykki Blanco ended up really transforming at the time my gender identity. And I guess we can... I don’t know if we’ll segue into that, but it became so much more than just an idea. And it really... If I really want to be meditative and reflective about it, it was as if the idea really was something within my subconscious that was coming, that was being birthed that was always there.

Anthony Obst

So at what time did... What was that moment?

Mykki Blanco

So it happened... It really happened like this. Is this sounding too close or too muffled or... I’m trying to like... Is that okay? It’s okay? OK. So it really happened like this. I think when I was younger maybe people considered me okay-looking and an attractive child. And then I remember once I came out of the closet there was... As a teenager, there’s all this awkwardness about your sexuality and your looks and what people think of you and... But I kind of... I was able to... I think I had... Let me see. I had about three boyfriends as a teenager. And then I went to college and it was this weird thing where college was this very isolating experience where... For some reason, I went to college for the first time in the Midwest. And this was in 2005. And I just remember coming from California there, and people would point at me on the street. This was before you can... Honestly, this is before people were wearing skinny jeans. So if you wore skinny jeans, people would point at you and be like, “What are you...?”

And people who are... I’m 33, so people who are around my age know exactly what I’m talking about. But when I was there in Chicago, people would point at me and scream at me and yell nasty things at me. And so my self-esteem went way down and I started to feel really unattractive and ugly. And so... And just really not good about myself. And so when I moved to New York, that kind of shifted again where I started to feel more comfortable. For the first time, I had a really diverse range of gay and trans and lesbian friends. And so with Mykki Blanco, Mykki Blanco really did begin as this conceptual art idea. Then, what happened was the more... Because I would... Basically, I would dress up in drag for the first time. I’d never done it before. I was 25. I would dress up in drag and I would create these videos as Mykki, rapping or almost vlogging in this kind of... In my mind, it was almost a Cindy Sherman kind of thing, but I was talking to the camera, making these diaries. And what would happen is that I would get into drag and I would... First of all, I would look dramatically different. But then I would start to feel different. But everything was happening inside the apartment. I was never leaving the house. And I started to get people having... I started to have people complimenting how I would look on the internet and being just like, “Ah, ha ha. I didn’t know you could look like this. Oh my god. You’re so pretty as a girl,” dah, dah, dah, dah.

And then one day, I’ll never forget, I just was like, “I’m going to go somewhere as Mykki Blanco. I’m going to leave the house in drag for the first time.” And so I took about three hours to do my makeup and get myself together, and I left the house for the first time in drag. And I will never forget that feeling of feeling, first of all, the way that the public reacted, but then in myself this confidence and this... I don’t know. It honestly felt... Almost felt spiritual really, because it was as if I had entered another dimension. All of a sudden, without me realizing it, my mannerisms were changing. And I started to go out more and more in drag. And then it became less about it being drag, and then I was just dressing up. And no one was really... Well, I shouldn’t say no one. But my close friends weren’t really questioning me about it. People were... If anything, I was more being encouraged by my friends, but no one was really asking me, “Oh, are you transgender now?” or, “Oh, are you changing your gender?” or, “Oh...” And also, I wasn’t necessarily... I wasn’t telling people not to call me he. I wasn’t saying, “Oh, you can’t call me Michael.” It was just like, “I am now...” It was just like, “I am now fully made up, and this is how I feel comfortable.”

And it also wasn’t... It was something that I was doing a lot. I would probably say probably four times out of a seven-day week I was dressing up, but I was dressing up every single day. At one point, I was dressing up every single day. But it was like, it’s like you go through your... It’s like... How can I put this? As a boy, and especially as a little black boy, you can go through life having people tell you like, “Oh Michael, he’s a handsome young guy,” or something like that. But when someone calls you pretty for the first time, and not even calls you pretty, but for the first time you feel pretty, that’s a very different feeling. It’s a very different feeling than feeling handsome. It’s a very different feeling than, I don’t know, feeling just okay. Or I don’t know. You just... There’s something that happens to you when you feel pretty.

And I began to explore that feeling more. And then, yeah. And then what really happened was that Mykki became not just this performance art persona or this character. I really came full circle to realize that Mykki was always me. It was always the way more feminized side of my personality, and that really this idea for this character was really a part of myself really being birthed for the first time.

Anthony Obst

I’d like to play a video, one of your early videos as Mykki Blanco, “Join My Militia.”

Mykki Blanco

Oh OK. Yeah. And you know what? Well, you know what? I have a question. Can we play the poetry video first and then “Join My Militia?”

Anthony Obst

Let’s do that.

Mykki Blanco

Because, I want to play the poetry video first because this really shows the link between before I was rapping and when I was still just reciting poetry and when I was becoming Mykki Blanco. And the “Join My Militia” video, I want to talk about that after, because that video was a rejection of what this was, and that’s also important to talk about. So I’m not even going by Mykki Blanco here. Interesting. And also, wait. Pause it really quickly. Pause it. So this is interesting. So look at that. Look how un-PC that is, FADER calling me, “Cross-dresser poet extraordinaire.” Anyway, so also... Well, no. Well, because this is also really important, and this is really important when you talk about me because even though I stand behind a lot of the things that I’ve done that I know that people feel are radical and that I know that people may have felt are pioneering, I’m also someone who has benefited from really being and making work at the right place, at the right time, and the right context, and then going for it because the fact that this is 2011, and FADER is calling me, “Cross-dresser poet extraordinaire,” that shows you that the acceleration point for how our culture talks about queer people and the LGBT has changed so dramatically in just seven years, or six years. While I’m a part of that zeitgeist, I think people are already forgetting that all of this is still so new in the public sphere, in the public dialogue. So, let’s go.

(video: Mykki Blanco – “Austin Texas”)

Really, what started to happen also at this time was that... This always happens, not always, but this can happen a lot within the culture industry and especially the fashion industry, where sometimes some of the most subversive or political ideologies will get picked up by the fashion industry first just for the sheer fact that of the speed that industry moves at, and the fact that that industry always needs an aesthetic, an ideology to kind of keep itself regurgitating, like this big giant chimera.

In New York, the fashion industry really kind of accepted me first before the world of music, because yeah it kind of just happened. I remember I did a video like this, and I did some other things. All of a sudden, this little black boy from North Carolina and California, I was doing, even though this is quite controversial now, at the time it wasn’t as much of, is doing photo shoots with Terry Richardson. I was doing ad campaigns. I remember I co-hosted this party with Chloë Sevigny.

I was just like, “Oh my god, I guess I’m an It Girl now. I’m an It Girl.” For a few months, I guess I was an It Girl. But, this is what’s important though, I was quickly realizing that people were not understanding the context of what I was doing. It’s like you have people really not understanding that I was trans, but me also not really understanding that I was trans, and kind of not fully identifying as trans. Then you also have this lineage of drag being comedy.

Before me, I think, and I’m not talking of all of history, but I’m talking about just in hip-hop, I think before me, the only person that you had rapping was this artist named Cazwell, and he’s a white guy, and the raps were really always really funny. They were really, really kind of tacky, cheesy, funny humor. That’s no offense to him. It’s true, I mean one of his most famous songs I think is, “I Saw Beyoncé at Burger King.”

So, it was this kind of really, really high camp thing. That was not at all what I was doing. I remember telling my manager, Charles, because now I had a manager, I remember telling Charles, “You know what? I have to show people many different sides of Mykki Blanco, because if I keep doing this fashion stuff people are going to think that this is just another topical drag queen that just wants to be pretty all the time, and that’s what this is about. People are going to think this is a joke. People are not going to understand.”

So, I created this idea of Mykki Blanco being a mutant, which was also a metaphor for being gender nonconforming. One of the first producers that I ever, and this is also... Yeah, some of this stuff sounds really mythological when I talk about it, but then I understand why people want to listen to it. One of the first producers I ever worked with was Arca when he was a freshman at NYU. I’m sorry, when she was a freshman at NYU. It’s this song that we made called “Join My Militia.” When it came time to conceptualize the video, I said, “I don’t want to do this video. No false eyelashes. No red lipstick. We’re not going to make this pretty. I want this to be horrorcore,” which horrorcore was this genre of ’90s hip-hop, that rap was like goth. It was like death and really hard stuff. I could name off the artists, but I’m not… Just Google horrorcore. Anyway…

Anthony Obst

The song, you already had the song at that time? It was just about the video? Or did the song come…

Mykki Blanco

Well, I was…

Anthony Obst

With that in mind as well?

Mykki Blanco

OK, so I was influenced by horrorcore, but really the video I think takes on that element. I remember when we were making the idea for this video, I told the director, “I want this to feel like The Simple Life entered The Blair Witch Project.” That’s kind of how this moment happened. Even the lyrics, “Mykki digital, sound wave oasis. Myk has got the itis. Hit ‘em with a basic. Make it so good a n---- wanna try and taste it. Straitjacket the beat, though it gets away in places. This right here, Joe, is Blanco voodoo. It’s black magic music. N----, blanco hoodoo. They kept me in this holding cell for close to eight days. They can keep me here forever ‘cause my story won’t change. His name Hassan Abul. Weight 170, height 6’2”. Size 12 shoe, black hair, brown eyes. The warmest smile, but so coldblooded inside. Who am I to judge him? I hate him but I love him. Insha’Allah he whispered, Ma’a Salama I whimpered. Damn. I didn’t know my man was in the Taliban. T-T-Taliban.” [applause]

And so that was my very first music video, and yeah, I was like I wanted people to know that this was not what you... If you thought this was going to be some rapping drag queen to make you laugh, this is not what that’s about. You know what’s funny? It’s in the title of the song, but I forgot. The most important lines in that whole entire song is, “Nas gave me a perm. He said you’ve got the hidden gift, kid. Lead them, they’ll learn.”

I remember, that had so much to do with this feeling, when I wrote this song, this feeling of, “What am I getting myself into?” People were already just so homophobic and mean to me from walking from the corner store to my apartment. So, yeah. It was, “Nas gave me a perm. He said you’ve got the hidden gift, kid. Lead them, they’ll learn.” Yeah, it kind of set the tone. Really, this video also helped things a lot. I remember Björk put this video on her website. This video freaked a lot of people out.

Anthony Obst

Well, I guess also the Nas reference in a sense. I mean, Nas kind of is this very sort of technical, lyrical rapper in a way, right? From that sort of standpoint, I guess it also signals your claim also in a sense to make a dope rap record. I’m wondering also in a sense, because you’re also rapping very well on one of your first rap records. I’m wondering did that sort of progression in a sense, come natural for you in terms of from writing poetry, to performing poetry over music, to performing poetry as music in the form of rap?

Mykki Blanco

I think so. I think I probably would not have been... If I hadn’t started with that No Fear screaming stuff, and then started doing the spoken word stuff, and then having that come after, I think that has everything to do with it. That’s why I said, when you talk about intention, I wasn’t like some kid that wanted to be a rapper, or even a teenager that wanted to be a rapper, or even a 21-year-old that wanted to be a rapper. I was already almost 26 there. I was just exploring stuff.

Anthony Obst

Did that, in a sense, feel like you had hit on something basically with that record, or with the mixtape, Cosmic Angel, in general?

Mykki Blanco

Yeah, but the moment that... I’m going to be honest. The two moments that shifted my intention from this just being this underground art thing, to oh wait a minute, maybe I could actually have aspirations of being like a Bowie or a Lou Reed… When I really started to think about myself as a musical artist, was “Wavvy” and “Haze.Boogie.Life.” “Haze.Boogie.Life” is the first time I really felt like I am a rapper. That song. That song in that moment.

“Wavvy” was an interesting thing, because that song was popular on the internet for a few months, and then since all this fashion stuff, and then a woman who was a writer for Italian Vogue befriended me. Her name was Stefania Pia. We did a video together which was just her interviewing me. She was a writer for Italian Vogue. The editor, she’s passed away now, but the editor of Italian Vogue was a woman named Franca Sozzani. Franca Sozzani’s son is a man named Francesco Carrozzini. Francesco Carrozzini saw that video, heard the song. So, Francesco is a director, but at the time he was only doing fashion stuff. They come from this fashion dynasty family, but he really at that time wanted to be doing music videos for major labels. I don’t think he was able to get his foot in the door, even though he had this huge fashion background, because like most things in life, you have to have the portfolio first. So, I don’t think... He just didn’t have a music video portfolio, that was that. In a turn of events that completely transformed my entire career, Francesco met with me, heard the song. We met like two or three times, and then he was like, “I want to offer you... I want to completely direct this music video for you, for free. Completely for free for this song. This song is doing well on the internet, but I think if we do this video, it could blow you into another stratosphere.”

Like I said, at the time I was folding t-shirts. Seriously, I was folding t-shirts. I had entered this weird phase where I was performing enough to where I could survive, and where I didn’t have to have a full-time job, but also where like if I wanted a full-time job I couldn’t really meet the schedule of performing. It was a very intense struggle period, where literally sometimes it would be like, “Do I have money for the subway, or money to eat?” Stuff like that.

Francesco does this video for me, and I remember, I’ll never forget him saying this to me. He was like, because he did pull in a lot of favors. He was like... Oh, and this is the other thing, until this day, I don’t know how much he spent. He never told me how much he really spent on the video. But he was like, “People are going to think I spent millions on this video. This is video is going to make you a star, but I didn’t spend millions.” That was the “Wavvy” video, yeah.

Anthony Obst

One thing also you’ve mentioned in the past was kind of that you also weren’t necessarily looking for acceptance in the hip-hop community, whatever that sort of might mean in this day and age, but that you had kind of teenage fans on Tumblr who were getting all your references in a way, right? Can you elaborate a little bit on why that is important to you?

Mykki Blanco

Yeah, I can. We had an idea that there might be some haters, but when I started out there was a lot of haters. I don’t need to backpedal and name names, and name websites, and name writers, or name people now who are just like, “Oh yeah, Mykki, yay.” But back then, I remember certain people, certain websites, certain editors were afraid of posting my videos or my songs, because they felt like it would alienate their audience.

I remember playing festivals where musical acts like the Flatbush Zombies were literally... I was literally on stage performing and they were on the ground calling me a faggot from the audience. Like, literally screaming at me. Yeah, I don’t like them. You know what? There was always also, always this thing of having to co-opt something. I remember I did the South by Southwest event with Ray Ban. It was all these rappers, and it was always... People would literally stop talking when I entered the room. I’m not over exaggerating. This is real sh-t.

It was really nasty. I remember A-Trak invited me to do Fool’s Gold, and I nearly got booed off stage. I literally nearly got booed off stage. It was such a f---ed-up time. It’s just so funny to me because now all of these young little rappers are walking around with Louis Vuitton purses and stuff. But you know what I mean, it’s just like in that short span of time y’all, people have changed in a lot of ways as far as what they see as palatable and tolerable in this culture, in these mini cultures.

What you just said is important, because if it wasn’t for social media, I think my career would have gone two ways. I think in the ’90s if I had been doing this, either I would have skyrocketed to fame because it would have been something that people had never seen before, or no one would have known who I was for my entire career and that’s how it would have been. With social media, what we weren’t realizing, and when I say “we” I mean me and just other queer artists or people that were kind of doing something different in these mid-2000s, 2011, 2012, 2013, I think that we weren’t realizing that these videos and stuff were getting re-blogged and retweeted.

This was also before Instagram, so it was this thing of people were now able to feel a sense of agency and where it’s like “Oh, wait a minute, I can relate to that.” Or, “That person is using pronouns in a song that are yeah, I like a ‘her’ too, I’m a ‘her.’ I like a ‘him’ too, if I’m a ‘him.’” Social media enabled me to have a fan base in a way where a lot of people at the time, all of a sudden we didn’t really need the validation of the music industry. For me in particular, it wasn’t as if I was even seeking that validation, but this is what I told my manager. Once I understood the concept of a booking agent, and for people who may not know, when you’re a musician you have your manager who manages you. Then, the person that actually puts you on stage is your booking agent. This person takes offers from people that see you, and they’re like, “Oh, we’d like Mykki Blanco to perform here.” So, a booking agent is very important because... And this is in the last 10 years or so, what I realized is that I could make money and I could be liked, and I could have my own audience, and it didn’t matter if I was being rejected by mainstream hip-hop. It didn’t matter if I was being rejected by hip-hop at all, because if these group of kids in Pittsburgh, and these group of kids in Florida, and these people in Austin, Texas, and these kids in London, and these kids in France, if these people want me to come and play, and they write my booking agent, and they make me an offer, oh wait a minute, I can make money.

Wait a minute, I don’t actually need anyone’s validation. Once I understood that... I remember I told my manager. I said, “I want a booking agent on every continent. First of all, I know that I’ll do better in Europe. I would rather not waste my energy trying to become famous in America where gay marriage hasn’t even passed. It’s like getting nearly booed off stage festivals, I was like, “F--- this.” Because I played my first show in Europe. I think it was 2011 I played my first show in Europe. The response... I was just like, “Oh sh-t, I found my people.” Do you know what I mean? Just the history of avant-garde artists being accepted in Europe goes back, as far back as people like James Baldwin, and Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, and that whole lineage of... Or Josephine Baker, you know what I mean? You have people who were misunderstood, especially people of color, in the states who went to Europe and f---ing became rich and famous, and happy.

I was just like, “I don’t have to do this.” This was a big deal because it enabled me to all of a sudden see a future for myself as a musician, and at this time man, it really did feel like the Wild Wild West because it was just like, “Oh sh-t, yo you may not want to recognize…” Because they were labeling me and Le1f, and Big Freedia is a bounce artist, but they were labeling all of us “queer rap.” Even that title at the time was really derogatory, not because we were not queer artists making rap, but because without even listening to what the songs were about, or what we were really trying to communicate, they were just slapping “gay” on it, “This is gay. Go on, go ahead.” Do you know what I mean?

It’s really embarrassing to think about now. Just evidenced by the title, that FADER piece, cross-dresser extraordinaire, it’s like people really have to understand that the transgender tipping point, gay marriage, all of this zeitgeist, all of these conversations that used to only be had in academic circles on college campuses, that have now entered the mainstream because of these moments, this was all so alien just like six and half years ago. People were really f---ing cruel. They’re still cruel, but it’s like I was really playing with a whole different set of folks. When I say “folks” I mean society.

Anthony Obst

We can go back to your relationship with Europe and…

Mykki Blanco

Can I just have a Red Bull?

Anthony Obst

I’m sure someone would love to bring you one. Go back to your relationship with Europe, and also you mentioned Baldwin. We can get to that in a minute, but I also wanted to maybe play something to maybe also illustrate sort of a musical shift for you. We’re jumping ahead a little bit in time, but I think that kind of fits what you were talking about just now. Do you want to listen to a “A Moment With Kathleen?”

Mykki Blanco

Oh, OK. Yeah, we can listen to that. What you’re about to hear is... So, I used to... Like I said, only until my very first album, which came out in 2016, did I stop making what I would consider “concept” stuff. I’ll explain why that is to you, but basically Cosmic Angel, the first mixtape, Betty Rubble, the second mixtape, and then Gay Dog Food, the third mixtape, all were super heavily conceptual ideas.

With Gay Dog Food, this mixtape that this song is from, my idea was I wanted to make a grunge rap... I wanted to make a feminist grunge rap album. One of the people that was most influential to me when I was 15 and 16 years old, is a musician, is a woman named Kathleen Hanna, who was in a famous band called Bikini Kill, then later in a band called Le Tigre. She is one of the front runners of a feminist movement of music called Riot Grrrl. It was the first genre of music where I ever even heard the word “queer”, where I ever heard songs that were talking about lesbianism, and about being gay, but in this really cool way. It wasn’t even really that literal. Anyway, I had the chance, it was like a dream of mine, to work with Kathleen. She doesn’t make that much music anymore because she has lupus, I believe. There’s a whole documentary about it. I’m not spilling any tea. She’s an amazing artist, but she doesn’t record that much anymore.

Anyway, we recorded this song together, and yeah this is like me recording with one of my idols. This is someone who, when I was a teenager, I was for the first time identifying as a feminist and reading about anarchical feminism, and cyber feminism, and all of these really esoteric things that most teens, many teens nowadays, many teens did then but didn’t feel like there were that many of us.

Anthony Obst

OK, let’s listen to “A Moment With Kathleen.”

Mykki Blanco

And it’s produced by Gobi, who was my roommate, who was a really awesome electronic producer still making these…

(music: Mykki Blanco ft. Kathleen Hanna – “A Moment With Kathleen” / applause)

And know what’s funny? Kathleen would affect in a lot of the Bikini Kill and Le Tigre songs. Kathleen would affect this valley girl voice. I remember someone commented to me shortly after this came out, they were like, “Do you even realize that’s what you were doing at the start of the song? You literally sound like Kathleen Hanna. You’re referencing Kathleen Hanna,” and I wasn’t even realizing I was referencing Kathleen Hanna. But yeah, anyway but yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Obst

The reason why I also wanted to play that song here was just to also just kind of illustrate a little bit of the sort of musical trajectory that you were then embarking on, sort of maybe away from more straight-forward rap tropes than what you were doing before. I am wondering also about whether you feel yourself gravitating towards any particular sound or maybe it’s a form of delivery, or whatever it is, or whether you also find yourself gravitating towards exactly that sort of idea of shape-shifting, of not being able to be pinned down in a sense musically.

Mykki Blanco

In the beginning and especially after Cosmic Angel, because as much as I love my first mixtape, Cosmic Angel, it has its moments of songs. I think the whole thing has like three songs that I would consider produced well, and that are actually good songs. The rest of it is just really like [makes noise]. With Betty Rubble, things got better, but it was like Cosmic Angel was me being this messy performance artist. Honestly, my manager helping me put all these desperate parts into a mixtape.

Betty Rubble: The Initiation, which was my second mixtape, was me having this idea of what would an acid house, goth, hip-hop record sound like? On that record, it’s really minimal production. It’s a lot of rap-rapping, almost in an old school way, almost in a Nas and a Tribe kind of way. Really, like Method Man... I think for that record, Ghostface, Method Man, Nas were huge aspirations. Then on the other side of it was my Thrill Kill Kult, Nine Inch Nails. Then with Gay Dog Food, like I said, this feminist grunge record.

That’s what I mean. Sometimes I look back and I’m like, if I had been more careerist, maybe I... I mean, I feel like just right now I’m about to enter kind of like the Hollywood phase of my career, which is also an interesting thing that’s happening right now. I always think... I didn’t think about stuff like that. If I wanted a banger, I’d be like, “I want to make a banger.” But, it was always from this angle of, “Oh, I have this idea. I should do this.” I think that’s what I mean. I think the confidence from that, yes it was me being punk, and me having these ideas and just wanting to explore them, but after I started to do these shows around the world and make money, it was like, “Well I don’t have to make a commercial-sounding song that has to somehow end up on the radio to f---ing buy f---ing designer shoes if I want.” I mean, this is my thinking at the time. It’s like, “Oh wait a minute, I can actually do what the f--- I want and get paid.” That’s a really empowering feeling, when you really feel that for the first time. I think yeah, it’s like... I mean, most of us know what it feels like to all of a sudden have a moment where we’re like, “OK. I may not be rich, but I can take care of myself.” It’s such a grounding moment, and it’s such a... That moment alone, of some kind of security, should let fireworks off in your head or should allow you to feel as if like, “OK. Let’s keep going for it,” or whatever you’re doing that works.

I was like, “OK. Me being myself is working. Let me just continue to do whatever the hell I want creatively.” I was also... Come on, I wasn’t like mature at all. There was no maturity there. I was literally like running wild. But I think that’s really cool, because I often think like, “Wow. Even though I’m pretty okay with myself, what if I was younger now and there was Instagram, and all of a sudden I could look at this many different people doing things?” It’s like, “Would I be a little succubus?” Not even little succubus, but it’s like, “Would it be harder to find my own identity, because there are so many attractive identities to choose from?” That’s, I think, one of the downfalls, sadly, of social media generation is where a lot of people can identify with something, and they can find their tribe. Also a lot of this is just psychologically natural to being young. You’re going to try on different things. You’re going to try on different phases. But creatively, it is this thing of just like, “Well, look at this person. Look how attractive they’re doing this thing. What if I just sprinkled a little bit of that on me?” I’m so glad that I didn’t start this with that being something that I could do... You know what I mean? In that way.

Anthony Obst

Not too long after Gay Dog Food, though, so Gay Dog Food came out in 2014. In 2015 you, for a brief moment, announced that you were going to be quitting music. Can you tell us a little bit about that time in your life?

Mykki Blanco

I can. Around the time that “Wavvy” came out, I found out that I was HIV positive. I was like, “Holy sh-t. I just have this crazy music video that came out. They’re giving me all this praise. I’m actually about to start having a musical career.” And then you... How can I put this? I was always someone who... Yeah, it’s true. I used to get tested a lot. It was almost like a neurosis. I mean, I was having sex. I was being like, young gay boy in New York City, but I used to get tested a lot. I think, also, it was like this fear. So one day I went to go get tested, and I was positive. I was just like, “Holy sh-t,” so I was like, “OK. Well, this can’t become public knowledge.” So it became something that was kept very dear with close friends. It was really interesting. I actually, when I was negative, like months before, dated, and this person is not the person that I contracted HIV from. But I tell this story because it’s, honestly, a really spiritual thing. Months before I became positive, I actually dated a person who was positive when I was negative, who was like really close to my age. That experience alone, I think, saved my life. Because I remember knowing, and I remember being educated enough in where the whole conversation around HIV was at. I knew that if you got HIV... What was this, 2011, that you would be okay, that you weren’t going to die. I mean, I didn’t know about specific medications or this or that, but I knew you weren’t going to die.

I’m, obviously, not going to say his name, but when me and this guy started dating, that’s one of the first things that he told me, and I was just like, “Oh, wow. How did this happen to you? You’re so young.” He had his own story. We dated for like six months. It was like he was super healthy. I watched him take his medication every day. It’s like that did not have... And I remember him telling me... Because I was one of the first people that he dated after he had become positive. And I remember him saying to me, “The way that you treat me so normally.” I mean, tears, obviously. He’s just like, “I just never thought that someone would treat me this way knowing this about me.”

So fast forward to my situation, and I’m just like, “Oh, my god.” I mean, obviously, way more tears. I tell him. I tell my mom. My god, it was just like... Obviously, parents, they just want to protect you. She’s like, “Well, no one can know.” So it had been something that was just in my private life. Thinking about it and thinking about celebrity culture and this and that and, honestly, just humanity, I guess really if I had not wanted to not tell the public ever, I guess that would have been my right, right? That would have been okay, right? That would have been my right. I mean, I’m sure we have a lot of people, especially some people that were maybe famous in the ’70s and ’80s, who are positive, and we don’t know, and it’s their privacy. They’re of a different generation, and that’s fine.

But for me, what was starting to happen was that I’d make out with a guy, and then I’d be like, “Oh, yeah. I’m positive. Please don’t tell anyone.” Or a hookup would happen, and there would have to be that conversation before we hookup where I’m like, “I’m positive. Please don’t tell anyone.” Now this had been going on for a while. This like, “Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone.” Friends come over. I’m putting my medication in the hamper, hiding my medication behind the pasta in the back of the kitchen.

So what happens when a person starts to behave like this? It almost becomes like a shadow self. At the time, I also had this logic, “Well, if I’m positive, then I should only probably date or be with other positive people.” One of the only ways I remember that I could meet other guys not being out about being positive was through like a hookup app like Grindr. Anyone who is gay or identifies as gay or anyone who really actually even... You don’t have to be gay... But who uses Grindr knows that that app is full of f---ing drugs. That app is kind of full of some dark sh-t if you get into it. So it’s like I was meeting... And this also goes back to this whole... I mean, we can have a whole other lecture about homosexuality, and stigma, and shame, and why people do things in the dark, and why people only meet up at three in the morning. We could have a whole entire whole lecture about that. But I was living a shadow life, and I was like... And you know what was happening also? I wasn’t stupid. I would go to San Francisco. I was in New York. I knew that there were men that were positive that were healthy. Men that were in normal relationships. Men that were walking down the street and wrapped up in a cardigan, drinking cocoa, that were positive, with their golden retriever. So I knew that these things existed. I knew that it wasn’t a death sentence. I knew that I could have this lifestyle. I didn’t think I could have it and be famous. I didn’t think I could have it and have a career in the industry.

So that post... Well, no. That post where I was like, “I’m going to stop doing music. I’m going to become an investigative journalist,” was, first of all, I was always interested in investigative journalism. Then, two, because I really thought, “You know what? If I’m going to be open about being positive, there’s no way I can have a career in music. I will be completely rejected. There’s no way I can be an artist anymore, and I have to make plans for myself.” That’s another thing. I’ve always been really... You know how they say some people live in the past, and it’s not good? One of the things about my personality, which I always have to center myself, is I live a lot in the future. I think a lot about the future. My boyfriend and I are always talking about this. Anyway. So I was like, “OK. I can’t be an artist anymore.” That post, I was in such a depression, and I was in such a self-hatred. I made that post, and then a few months later, the next post that I made on Facebook... I forget. You can Google it. On Facebook, I’ll never forget, a friend of mine... His name is Shawn, but his artist name is Yves Tumor. Before he was Yves Tumor, he was Teams. We were in Los Angeles, and he was throwing this... He was always really good at throwing these crazy cool parties. So he was throwing this party, and I was supposed to be arranging the afterparty. I had been touring, and I used to spend my money in really, really, really not good ways. Well, actually, that’s debatable. I had gotten this hotel suite at the Chateau Marmont, which is this like celebrity chi-chi hotel in LA. This is where we were going to have the afters. I remember, actually, I was so invested in this whole entire thing that I didn’t even go to the party. I was like decorating this f---ing suite. Because I like hosting dinner parties, and stuff, whatever... Anyway. People were supposed to come over, and my medication was there, and I forgot or something. I forgot or, honestly, maybe I was drunk. I had forgotten the medication was somewhere out. People were literally like... When I discovered that the medication was there, like out, people were like walking or maybe they were outside and couldn’t get in or in the lobby. I like panicked and didn’t know where to put the medication. I think I put it under the mattress or something like that. But it was like this heightened sense of panic of like, “Where am I going to put the medication?” I remember after they left. I remember I took out the medication. I remember thinking like, “You can’t live like this?” You know what I mean? Like, “This isn’t a life. And it’s so unreflective of who you are 22 hours out of most days.” So I got on Facebook, and I was just like, “I have been HIV positive since 2011, my entire career.” And actually I don’t even know what the rest of the quote was, but I just put it on Facebook, and boy, that took off. You want to talk about likes. That post, Time magazine wrote about it. Time magazine hasn’t written about me since, and they hadn’t written about me before, but they wrote about that. What I didn’t realize is, I didn’t realize that I’m one of the first people to ever do that in that way with my platform. I also realize that I think I’m one of the only slight musicians... Besides like Eazy-E who died in the hospital and who never actually came out about it. We found out, I think, after he died. Or maybe he did on his deathbed. I don’t want to misconstrue that story. RIP Eazy-E.

But, basically, I realized that the way in which I did that sh-t hadn’t been done in that way, and I wasn’t even thinking about it like that. I was thinking that I was going to wake up on Monday morning, and my manager and everybody is going to be like, “Oh, we can’t really work with you.” I mean, what example did I have? I had Magic [Johnson]... Everyone that I knew that had publicly come out as being HIV positive was publicly shunned. I mean, and we all know this is also true. So it’s like what example did I have of anyone being positive? And even though I knew people were happy and healthy in the real world, these weren’t the celebrities that we enjoy and whose work that we digest, you know?

Anthony Obst

Exactly. So in a sense, we were... You were talking about that you also wanted to quit music at that time. In 2016, you released your album Mykki. I would like to play a video from that album, because I think it also illustrates, maybe, a new way for you to incorporate also more sort of political messages also into your work.

Mykki Blanco

Well, before, because... OK. Before you show that video, I just want to quickly say that... Basically after I came out like I was positive, I thought like, “Oh, my god. The world’s going to be over.” So there was probably like a seven- or eight-month long media cycle where every time someone would write about me, they would f---ing write about me being positive. I was just like, “OK. Well, my career’s not over, but just like f---. I mean, how many times are they going to always include like...” So it went from being queer rapper or gay rapper to HIV positive rapper, Mykki Blanco.

I think I made some post that was like, “You writers that are doing that, do you realize that every time you do that, you’re just re-stigmatizing me? Do you realize that every time you do that, you’re just basically reinforcing the stereotype of otherness? So if someone reads an article about me, if you’re going to put that as the first line they’re reading, the person’s going to already have some idea in their head before they even know what the f--- the song or the video is about.”

So just really quickly, that moment was important, because I thought everything was over. Everything wasn’t over. I never realized that people could be so compassionate, that people could really kind of lift me back up. One of the people that lifted me back up was the producer Woodkid. He was just like, “You’re not going to quit music. You’re going to come to Paris, and we’re going to work on music together.” That moment is what led to the nucleus of my first album.

Also, right after I announced, I started working with this electronic label called !K7, because my career had entered this weird phase where it wasn’t stalling. But before I had come out as HIV positive, I had had a meeting with XL Records, and they were like, “Oh, we love what you’re doing. But you’re already pretty much a developed artist, and we can’t really develop you.” I had had a meeting with Capitol Records that was just like, “Oh, you’re doing really cool stuff. Send us more music.” So it was time for me to kind of align myself and a way to get larger exposure, but it just wasn’t happening.

Then this relationship with !K7 happened, and they were super supportive. They allowed me to start Dogfood Music, which is my own label. Yeah. Yeah. Then we had the album, which is kind of the first time I ever made music that was not conceptual. When I made my album, the first album, Mykki, that was out in 2016, I was like, “For the first time, this isn’t going to be a concept. You’re going to make songs about you. You’re going to make songs about your lived experience. This isn’t going to be through the guise of anything other than who you are and what you’ve done, and all that stuff.”

Anthony Obst

OK. Let’s watch “High School Never Ends,” a video from that.

Mykki Blanco

And this was directed by Matt Lambert. Just really quickly, whenever I do a video, I always think to myself a lot of things. But one of the things that I think is, “As a queer person, what have I never seen other queer people do?” So the idea for this video was initially born out of this idea that I had with Matt, which is, “I’ve never seen a queer anarchist. Let’s make a video about queer anarchists.” So that’s always where my brain goes at first. Yeah, we can watch the video.

(video: Mykki Blanco – “High School Never Ends” / applause)

Anthony Obst

Can you tell us a little bit about what that video represents to you? Also, in a sense, what it meant for you as an artist when you were making that?

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. So at the end of it, at the very end scene, I remember there’s this thing that you can use that they can induce tears. It’s called a tear stick, and it’s like this mentholated stick. I remember telling Matt, the director, I was like, “Matt, I don’t think I need a tear stick. I think I could really do it,” and I started crying. It’s one thing to be in the moment, but I remember thinking about... I get emotional now, but I remember thinking about there’s... You think about all of those times where you... Because you start this, and you may start it not wanting to be some big celebrity, or something, but once you see your potential or once you see like, “OK. Perhaps this could really be... My dream could come true,” you want it. You start to yearn for it. I think that what this video, to me, represents so much of is it’s like when I was 19 and dropping out of college, it’s like I was living in queer punk houses, you know what I mean? Where we would f--king take acid and drink brass monkeys. It was a really romantic period in my life, and I think about all of those times where I wanted to be so much more, but I just didn’t know what I wanted to be yet. You know what I mean? Or where I saw something, where I had a goal, or even like I said, when I thought my whole entire world was going to crash in on me when I admitted that I had been HIV positive and that I was living healthily with HIV.

It’s this feeling of like, there’s just this feeling of every time you transcend something, every time you have transcended something, and you continue to transcend something, it’s every time you think the sky is about to fall down on you, it doesn’t. You know what I mean? It’s like you also realize there’s, actually, many worse things that could happen then losing a career or losing this. You know what I mean? For me, if I were to lose my sight, that would break my heart more than anything I’ve experienced living with HIV or, I don’t know, having a close family member die, or all kinds of traumas that can happen. I think that, oftentimes... And it’s natural. We all do this. I still do this, but sometimes you can get so attached to a trauma that you can then allow that trauma to define you. Then when that trauma defines you, you build a story about yourself and about your life. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be a victim story. When you start to believe that victim story, that victim story can start to create behaviors or you can make excuses, or, “I am this way because of my trauma,” and, “You have to accept me being rude,” or, “You have to accept that I’m flaky,” or, “You have to accept that I can’t get to work on time, or that I crumble every time I watch this commercial, or that my f---ed up relationship with my father has to characterize every single aspect of my life.” But you become a prisoner of yourself when those things happen. And it’s really natural. It’s a really human thing to do.

But when you can catch it, and when you can transcend it, and that transcendence can then become a reminder. It’s like every time you can, even in the most minutia of your thoughts ... It’s like this year, I decided to delay my album. I decided to delay my album, and I was like, “You know what? I should probably focus on my sobriety more and certain things that I felt like were starting to get really shaky again.” I got depressed for a while, because I thought to myself, “Why can’t I be different? Why can’t I be better? Why can’t I be one of these people to not have these problems and just have my life go forward?” But it’s like, “No.” It’s like, “You know what? This is something that I need to transcend and that probably will be something I continually have to transcend, and that’s okay.”

So for me to see this video I think, overall, for me... It’s like this video, for me and a lot of the overarching things and what I do, is it’s just like from the very beginning, people really second-guessed me. It didn’t matter if I was super talented. It didn’t matter what I had done. Because it was so taboo, there was always this thing of being second-guessed, and I transcended that, and I’m still transcending that. Like I said, even to be doing this talk, I haven’t had a lifetime retrospective, you know? I’ve made a lot of stuff, but it’s not like I’m a Genesis P-Orridge or someone who’s had a lifetime body of work. The fact that people are interested enough in what has happened in this trajectory thus far, I’m really, really grateful for, and I just want to keep transcending sh-t.

Anthony Obst

Yeah. I find it, also, just very beautiful that, in that video... I mean, we’ve talked about poetry. We talked about acting. We talked about music where all of this, in a sense, also comes together and for you to, in a sense, kind of come back with that kind of statement where it really... I mean, this also comes into play with political aspects, political messages, into your music. So I think it’s really powerful that, also, everything comes together in that video. You’re mentioning your new album. Maybe...

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. Are we ready? Let’s wrap this up.

Anthony Obst

Yeah. You brought some tracks.

Mykki Blanco

Oh, god, yeah. Your butts are probably ready to get up, aren’t you?

Anthony Obst

I mean, I...

Mykki Blanco

I don’t know.

Anthony Obst

You mentioned it now, so we can go there. Maybe we find other things to talk about, and we’ll open it up to the audience also in a few minutes.

Mykki Blanco

OK. Yeah.

Anthony Obst

You said you wanted to play us something from your new album.

Mykki Blanco

Yeah. Since I found out that this is not... Like the music won’t be online, I’m going to just play you guys maybe one or two, if you want to hear the second one, of the new songs from the album that’s not going to come out... Well, the first single will be out in October. Let’s go.

Anthony Obst

Just briefly, before we take a few questions from the audience, what is important for you in a collaboration?

Mykki Blanco

I mean, I almost can never work just off the internet. I always have to be in the room with the person. You know what I mean? I think, if anything, the most important thing with me in a collaboration is that we just both kind of like are vibing on the composition. I’m not like a dictator in the studio. I’m working with this artist, because this artist can bring something that I don’t have... Or that I can learn from. So I just think it’s this give and take of like, honestly, letting them do their thing. Obviously, I’m going to go and edit and end up cleaning up what I think is appropriate for the track. But it’s that freedom of like... You know what I mean?

I’m going to be honest, I’ve been a Saul Williams and a Devendra Banhart fan since I was damn near fricking learning how to masturbate. You know what I mean? It’s just like, to have a song where Devendra Banhart’s doing the intro to my f---ing track, I’m just like... Then to have a track where I’m literally spinning like poems with Saul Williams, it’s just like that’s, for me, like life-changing sh-t, you know?

Anthony Obst

Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, thank you for playing those tracks, Mykki, and thank you very much for this conversation. Please, everybody, give a warm round of applause to Mykki Blanco.

Mykki Blanco

Thank you all. [applause]