This Friday, June 18 Mykki Blanco will drop their highly anticipated mini-album, Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep (Transgressive Records). They now share another taste of the LP by way of new single “It’s Not My Choice” (feat. Blood Orange) – a soft mid tempo soul jam that narrates the tug of war that is a dysfunctional relationship. The track sees Mykki Blanco navigating the painful realities of a potential breakup, reflecting then pleading to save their romance and keep the love alive. With production from executive producer FaltyDL reminiscent of the early eighties musical stylings of Steely Dan, Michael McDonald and Anita Baker, “It’s Not My Choice” finds Blood Orange’s Devonte Hynes crooning melancholically over a lush synth and saxophone laden baseline. “It’s Not My Choice” leaves the listener musing whether it’s worth it to stay together or allow love to have a change of heart.

The single follows the recently released “Summer Fling,”“Free Ride,” and “Love Me” (feat. Jamila Woods and Jay Cue). While the mini-album is available via all DSPs this week, the physical formats will be available October 1. It marks Blanco’s first official release in nearly five years since their debut full-length Mykki album.
It’s been just over a decade since the moniker ‘Mykki Blanco’ was created — first as a video art project portraying a teenage female character posting vlogs and raps on social media, but it inevitably evolved into a vehicle of self-discovery in the artist’s journey of forming their personal self-identity. 

Mykki has 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 recognized 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 such significant musical evolution toward eradicating the confines of genre categories and mashing the previous perception of the ceiling of their potential reach.

Photo Courtesy: Luca Venter