Gig Review: Mykki Blanco

05/10/16: In this digital age, it’s our natural inclination to want to categorise the vast onslaught of new music that comes our way to make it more manageable. And, like a veritable raft of singers, popstars, and artists before him, Mykki Blanco has baulked at the idea of just being dismissively labelled as ‘queer hip-hop’. And he’s right; classification brings comparison, and there’s no one doing anything anywhere close to what Mykki is doing at the moment.

 


His debut album ‘Mykki’ finally arrived in September, and is a slick culmination of the brash and anarchic output he’s released so far. It’s an energetic shot of pure creativity, veering indiscriminately between genres, and, like a whirlwind one-night stand, you find it’s over before it’s barely begun. It’s playful, sometimes mimicking traditionally masculine hip-hop tropes, other times, tearing them apart with a queer vengeance. Even if you were to approach it without hearing any of the hype or context, which would’ve been difficult, you’d still find a refreshingly modern hip-hop record.

XOYO was the perfect venue for such an intense collection of songs. It gave the gig more of a club-night feel, especially when Mykki abandoned the stage to cavort in the crowd, pouring vodka into people’s mouths, and then climbing onto the bar to perform, Coyote Ugly-style. He prowled the venue with the intensity of a deranged tiger and, despite a relatively short set, managed to show off a wide range of work, everything from the lushly-produced, Drake-jam of ‘Loner’, the manically faggy call-to-arms of ‘For the Cunts’, the rapturously-received manic-trap of ‘My NeNe’. He dipped into his older material, including cuts from Gay Dog Food, in which he managed to sharply pillory the crowd for ‘having brunch in Hackney and being so cool…Peckham’s just a bit too rough around the edges’. The only half-hearted response of the night was when he bemoaned his early stage time. Surprisingly, London’s 9-to-5ers weren’t so enthusiastic.

There is a danger of overusing the word ‘queer’ when trying to describe Mykki Blanco and thereby diluting it into a tame, academic definition, but that wouldn’t do justice to the genuine queerness of his work; a spirit that is inescapably subversive and perilously confrontational. His performance was a sweaty, anarchic rampage that was difficult to take your eyes off. Label him a queer rapper at your peril; he’s far more than that. He’s a queer punk. A queer rockstar. A queer pioneer.  File him in the category ‘Mykki Blanco’.

 

• XOYO, 32-37 Cowper Street, EC2A 4AP

• Mykki Blanco’s album Mykki, is out now. 
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