BGF

WORDS: CLIFF JOANNOU

MYKKI BLANCO

IT’S A LIFE-CHANGING SUMMER FOR QUEER UNDERGROUND RAPPER, PERFORMANCE ARTIST, POET AND ACTIVIST MYKKI BLANCO. IN JUNE HE CAME OUT AS HIV POSITIVE VIA FACEBOOK IN ORDER TO CHALLENGE STIGMA AROUND THE SUBJECT, AND IN JULY HE ANNOUNCED THE LAUNCH OF HIS RECORD LABEL AND NEW MUSIC PROJECT C-ORE

Mykki Blanco (born Michael David Quattlebaum Jr) is one of the gay world’s most authentically innovative artists right now. And like any true counter-culture pioneer who emerged from relative obscurity to the top of the underground music scene’s ladder you’d expect him to have an equally alternative upbringing by equally alternative parents. Blanco ticks all those boxes, and then some.

Let’s start with his dad, a San Francisco based psychic who Blanco says was a powerful influencing force in his life. “I remember being a kid and he would take me to psychic-orientated bookshops, and

I never thought much of it at the time. My creativity was nurtured from an early age. My dad told me he knew I was gay from when I was three-years-old. He definitely nurtured that side of my character. He would buy me girls’ toys,” he says.

Later in life, Blanco asked his dad why he bought him those things when most fathers would balk at indulging that kind of behaviour in their son. He simply responded telling Blanco, ‘That’s what you liked. I wasn’t going to buy you something you didn’t want’.