Biography
Mykki Blanco, born Michael David Quattlebaum Jr. in Orange County, California, on April 2, 1986, spent parts of a childhood in San Mateo County before the family settled in Raleigh, North Carolina[1]. As a teenager, Blanco founded an experimental theater company, Paint In Consciousness Experimental Theater, and won a regional Indies Spirit Award for it before moving to New York City at sixteen[1]. A scholarship later brought Blanco to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where two semesters immersed in the city's noise music scene proved formative before Blanco departed to pursue music and performance art full time[1].
Blanco's recording career began in 2012 with the EP Mykki Blanco & The Mutant Angels, a project that helped establish a reputation for confrontational, genre-blurring performance built at the intersection of rap, drag, and downtown art scenes[1]. The mixtapes and albums that followed brought collaborations with an unusually wide range of artists, including Madonna, Kanye West, Arca, Charli XCX, Blood Orange, Michael Stipe, and ANOHNI, along with festival stage time opening for acts like Diplo and Björk[2].
In June 2015, Blanco publicly disclosed having been HIV positive since 2011, becoming one of the more visible artists in hip-hop to speak openly about the diagnosis[1]. Blanco's relationship to gender and pronouns has also evolved publicly over the years; Blanco has said the ambiguity was often intentional, since no single pronoun ever felt like it mattered more than the work itself, and by 2021 Blanco was using they/them pronouns[1]. Blanco has also spoken about spending roughly eight years pushing back against reductive labels like "queer rapper," arguing that the identity politics of the 2010s often overshadowed the music itself[3].
Blanco's discography includes Mykki (2016), Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep (2021), and Stay Close to Music (2022)[1]. In 2024, Blanco completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, adding a formal credential to a career already built on constant reinvention[1]. More recently, Blanco relocated to Tangier, Morocco, part of a deliberate turn toward stillness and observation that shaped the 2026 album CAFE PARADISO, recorded in New York with longtime collaborator and producer Drew "FaltyDL" Lustman[2][3].
References
- Mykki Blanco — Biographical background: birth name, upbringing, education, early career, HIV disclosure, and pronoun history.
- Mykki Blanco: "There's this sense of cosy contentment" — Interview covering collaborations, festival history, and the relocation to Tangier.
- [INTERVIEW] Mykki Blanco on Finding Stillness and Creating 'CAFE PARADISO' — Interview on resisting identity labels and the making of CAFE PARADISO.