Mykki Blanco - Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep

Resident Advisor

The queer, gender-fluid alter ego of Michael David Quattlebaum Jr. began as performance art depicting a femme character in a YouTube skit. Since then, Mykki Bla..

Pitchfork 76

Read Cameron Cook’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Transgressive)
The New York artist-cum-rapper amps up the emotion on their latest outing, along with some nods to jazz and house

Mykki Blanco has spent their career immolating boundaries. A performance artist-cum-rapper informed by everything from outré digitals to punk, this 35-year-old’s work has long combined aggression and mischief, frankness and vulnerability.

This nine-track mini-album is their first outing since 2016’s self-titled Mykki, when emotion seemed to gain the upper hand over spikiness. Here, Blanco is processing the end of a relationship aided by producer FaltyDL; the mood veers from regretful to flirtatious. The trap-inclined That’s Folks sees Blanco go head-to-head with Big Freedia, while the defiantly single Summer Fling is as lewd as it is catchy (“Your dick smell of hamsters, go take a bath.”)