Mykki Blanco, a performance-art character created by Michael Quattlebaum, has gone through a few phases already in her short career. Since her aggressive and experimental 2012 debut full-length, Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Princess, Blanco’s work has consistently been centered around identity and the struggles of claiming her own. Right before the release of her follow-up EP, Betty Rubble: The Initiation, I interviewed her on the trials of being a multi-persona artist. She told me, "A lot of people want musicians to have one image. If I had chosen to do that in a gimmicky way, it may have made things easier at first, but I would’ve lost out in the end because I would be a prisoner of a persona." That constant battle to avoid marginalization continues, and arguably tips over, in Blanco’s latest project, the self-proclaimed "punk" album, Gay Dog Food.
One of the first things you notice here is that Blanco has scaled back on actual rapping. Some of the record's early songs ("For the Homey's", "Self-Destruction"), while maintaining Blanco’s penchant for adaptable cadence and stable charisma, feel like empty attempts at war-cry chants, but others fare better. On "Baby’s Got Big Plans", the spooky sounds that back Mykki’s ominous nobody’s-fucking-with-me lyricism call back to standouts from her catalog ("Virginia Beach", "Feeling Special", "YungRhymeAssassin"). The same goes for "Fulani", which features backing vocals by Ian Isiah.
Musically, Gay Dog Food is no more punk than any of her previous music. "A Moment With Kathleen", a collaboration with feminist punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna, is in line with the concept but fails to offer more than what’s on the surface. Mykki’s most spirited vocal delivery comes in the Cities Aviv-featuring "Moshin in the Front" which is another song that, distortion aside, feels like it could have fit on any Blanco project.
Mykki’s talent and continued willingness to strip away rap conventions keep Gay Dog Food from being a complete wash. She’s at her best when the desire to self-compartmentalize is absent. "Cyber Dog"’s harrowing pings, creepy "You’re my alien angel baby girl/boy" chant, and seesaw of monstrous indecipherable vocals is Gay Dog Food’s most entertaining track. The project’s least Mykki-centric moment, "Lukas", an outsider look at a man whose all-over-the-place quest for identity could place his story and the song a spot on the Shortbus soundtrack, is another standout.
Gay Dog Food sees Mykki Blanco at an understandable crossroads; in a recent conversation with Kathleen Hanna published by The Fader, Blanco spoke about her frustration with being grouped with other gay, black artists like Zebra Katz and Le1f for reasons other than the sound of their music. That, and her publicized disregard for a "straight man’s respect" in an interview with Paper Magazine shows her with a reasonable level of anger at being constantly shortchanged. But for the bulk of Gay Dog Food, the depth that comes so easily in Blanco’s interviews is in short supply.
