How Mykki Blanco Almost Quit Music
For a few months in 2015, it looked quite possible Mykki Blanco would quit music altogether to become an investigative journalist. In this excerpt from a recent Fireside Chat on RBMA Radio with Hanna Bächer, the provocative musician recounts the circumstances around this moment of uncertainty.
I was so serious, I was dead serious about that. What happened was, around this time, I started working with K7, but it was still really new, and there wasn’t any expectations yet. We were just a partnership begun. Then I was having all these personal issues and I was like, “You know what? I don’t want to do music anymore. Thanks for the offer, but…”
Then K7 said, “How about you...” I was getting talked into more and more, just recording a few songs, because my plan was, I had literally talked to all of these [outlets]. I had talked to Vice, I had talked to some people at NBC, I had talked to a lot of outlets who were wanting me to begin to report for them. I had planned to spend a month in Nepal and do my own research on gay life in Nepal, what it is to be transgender, gay, [part of the] LGBT community there. My new thing was going to be going into remote parts of the world and investigating what the LGBT communities in these places of the world was. I was like, “What an exciting new life.”
Literally two weeks before – because I had the ticket held, but I hadn’t bought it yet – the earthquake in Nepal happened. One person had even offered to have a cameraman come with me towards the end of my trip to do a synopsis. Had that happened, I would’ve gone to Nepal, had all this research, done my thing, and then, what I wanted, was one of these stations or one of these internet sites to give me my own travel show. If that had happened and I had gone on with that course, yeah, that would’ve been it. I think a lot of people thought that was a flight of fancy, but that was a real thing. The only reason I did not go to Nepal is because the earthquake happened there and then I couldn’t go and then I was like, “Okay, I’ll start my own mini label.”
I was personally just so disenfranchised with the industry. Now that I’m out of that period, it makes me realize that I have this, I should’ve known better. Sometimes you can just get so beaten up. The entertainment industry will knock you down. It will kick you and knock you down. All old entertainers, they say it, but you’re only a failure if you don’t get back up. I do believe that.
