The Making of Mykki Blanco

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http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-04-10/music/mykki-blanco/



"Who fucks up two full rides?" Michael Quattlebaum Jr. is sitting in the kitchen of his manager's apartment in Williamsburg one cold Sunday morning, drinking a beet juice and wearing sweats. The rapper's hair is close-cropped, almost shaved—a style that makes him look younger than his 27 years, and facilitates the wearing of wigs—and his voice is slightly raspy. "It was a big crisis moment when I dropped out of school. The second time, I was just like, if I'm not successful, if I don't start working really hard at something, I have really fucked up."

Quattlebaum, better known by his rap alias, Mykki Blanco, has not really fucked up. Judging by his schedule, he hasn't fucked up at all. Yesterday he crisscrossed Manhattan and Brooklyn on a 14-hour video shoot. Today he flies to Los Angeles, where he is recording his forthcoming EP. Later this month, he will head to Europe for a 22-city tour that will take him from Finland to Italy. Mykki Blanco raps about gay sex and mutant monsters and Albert Einstein, and although Quattlebaum is a man, Mykki is a woman. She has shared a stage with Grimes, and been photographed by Terry Richardson, and tweets with Azealia Banks, who recently rated Mykki's last mixtape her favorite hip-hop release of 2012. "It looks like the future," Banks told Hypetrak TV late last year. "He can actually rap. It's not like a gimmick at all."

A day earlier, Quattlebaum was dancing on a soundstage in Williamsburg while his song "Kingpinning" played on a loop. He wore a vest covered in studs, a pair of plaid pants, a backward Katz's Deli baseball cap, and a strap-on harness. Clarence Fuller, who did the video for Banks's "Luxury," was directing as a shirtless Quattlebaum—after a wardrobe change to a silk Chanel scarf, worn as a turban—danced with a procession of the downtown-famous: music video director Vashtie Kola, musician Dev Hynes, rapper Le1f, OHWOW gallery founder Aaron Bondaroff, and up-and-coming r&b singer Ian Isaiah all made cameos.

"I roll with all types," Quattlebaum rapped, with a shimmy. "Real niggas, real dykes/White boys with them yarmulkes/Model chicks with a million followers." He is a lithe and agile 6-foot-2. His five o'clock shadow reads on camera and his torso—covered in tattoos of the Star of David, crescent moons, and phrases like "Pony Boy" and "Wise Up"—is flat and androgynous. Between takes, Shayne Oliver, who designs streetwear label Hood by Air, approached tentatively. "This is a—this is maybe stupid," said Oliver, "but, like, when I talk about you, should I say 'he' or 'her' or . . . ?" Quattlebaum grinned.