Hip-hop celebrates its 50th year as Mykki Blanco announces new track and EP

August 11, 2023 Queer Forty Staff 1 min read

Last Friday the music genre referred to as hip-hop turns 50! And what great timing that queer rapper and performance artist Mykki Blanco has announced their new EP, Postcards From Italia.

Postcards From Italia is the follow-up to last year’s album Stay Close To Music. For the release, Blanco once again worked with the producer FaltyDL. The lead single “Holidays In The Sun,” which boasts explicit lyrics and a cover that has the Internet abuzz, is out now.

“Holidays In The Sun” was created in a basement in Portugal on Christmas Eve, and produced by William Eaves of Somerset, written by Mykki Blanco with additional writing and vocals by artist ZamZam.

“The song is a feel good summer anthem about lazy summer days swimming in the sea, hopping from one music festival to the next, feeling good about life and living la dolce vita soaking up the sun,” says Blanco. “The song is a summer rave bop with nods to ’90s euro dance and acid house stretching itself, hitting every corner of the world from the beaches of Ibiza and Naples to warehouses parties in London and Berlin. ENJOY!”

In 2015, Time Magazine reported that Blanco, a poet-rapper-multi-hyphenate who alternately identified as transgender and multi-gendered, revealed on Facebook that he was living with HIV.

“I’ve been HIV Positive since 2011, my entire career,” Blanco wrote on his Facebook account. “F— stigma and hiding in the dark, this is my real life.”