Mykki Blanco

Michael Quattlebaum Jr. is one of the very few early and courageous reformers of rap. At the beginning of the 2010s, they announced a hip-hop world that was every bit as bouncy and driving, yet entirely free of misogyny, rampant vanity and greed for money: "I am perceived as such an outsider in hip-hop that, when it comes to rap, I almost feel like a terrorist." An uncompromising openness to every kind of adverse lived reality, a socialisation on the streets and in poetry, punk and the Riot Grrrl movement, as well as a constant position in-between and a fluid understanding of gender are of course exceptional in rap. But Blanco's art also occupies a special position in the pop world as a whole. By now, the terrorist has become a kind of star and, on the way out of the underground, has collaborated with Madonna, Michael Stipe, Anohni, Charli XCX, Kathleen Hanna and many, many others.