Genre bending rapper and performer comes to NZ at last

Strange News & Community Garden, in association with 95bFM present MYKKI BLANCO  Genre-bending rapper, artist, performance artist visits Aotearoa for the first time  Friday 8 March - Neck of the Woods, Auckland Saturday 9 March - Port Noise Festival, Lyttelton Sunday 10 March - Meow, Wellington  Strange News Touring and Community Garden are sizzling with excitement to announce American rapper, performance artist, poet and activist Mykki Blanco (he/they) is set to conquer Aotearoa with three very special live shows this March.   How many artists can claim to have collaborated with the likes of Kathleen Hanna, Michael Stipe, Madonna, Anohni, Blood Orange, Jonsi, and Kanye West? Not many, if any, but Mykki Blanco is that artist. In the decade since the Mykki Blanco enigma was born - first as a video art project portraying a teenage female character (inspired by Lil Kim’s ‘Kimmy Blanco’ alter ego) posting vlogs and raps on social media, the persona has inevitably evolved into a vehicle of self-discovery in the artist’s journey of forming their personal self-identity; now, Mykki Blanco is Mykki Blanco. The first official music release under the artist name Mykki Blanco dropped in the form of an EP entitled Mykki Blanco & The Mutant Angels in 2012. In the time since, they have pushed hip-hop to some of its most untethered bounds, melding noise and experimental elements with club and trap sounds, whilst also forging a uniquely subversive path within a genre historically entangled in a problematic ideological web of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia… And while Blanco has been widely recognised as leading the charge as a pioneering trailblazer in the so-called ‘queer rap’ sub-genre, the music of this forthcoming new chapter of their career represents a hugely significant musical evolution toward eradicating the confines of genre categories and mashing the previous perception of the ceiling of their potential reach.   Strange News & Community Garden present MYKKI BLANCO  With very special guests  Friday 8 March - Neck of the Woods, Auckland Tickets from www.undertheradar.co.nz Saturday 9 March - Port Noise Festival, Lyttelton Tickets from www.undertheradar.co.nz Sunday 10 March - Meow, Wellington Tickets from www.moshtix.co.nz