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"   Mykki Blanco, center, styled by Akeem Smith. Photo: Kevin Amato   There&amp;#039;s a new Queen of Hip-Hop\u2014and she&amp;#039;s not like anything you&amp;#039;ve seen before. Her name? Mykki Blanco. Her job? Something like &amp;quot;cross dressing poet extraordinaire.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I would just consider myself an artist,&amp;quot; says Michael David Quattlebaum Jr., a.k.a. Mykki Blanco, 24, in between sipping a coffee and taking bites of a chocolate croissant at The Smile on Bond Street. Today, the budding star comes across as an off-duty club kid, keeping it casual in zany patterned shorts with a beanie over his buzzed hair (and hot pink acrylic nails from a dizzying week of photo-shoots). It&amp;#039;s no secret that the Harlem-based artist, who&amp;#039;s considering changing the title of his upcoming mixtape from Cosmic Angel to The Rebirth Of The Showgirl, has a penchant for glamour: for Happy Socks&amp;#039; recent campaign, Terry Richardon shot Quattlebaum dressed like a retro pin-up girl, flashing peace signs in a va-va-voom wig with plenty of lip gloss; on stage at a recent show opening for SSION, the show-stopper worked the crowd, firing out lyrics like &amp;quot;All these mainstream girls, with their mainstream teams, and in walks Mykki, army of me.&amp;quot; The words ring true: Blanco&amp;#039;s leading a one-woman show sans manager or publicist. This spring, he has a four-weekend residency at the Living Theater (think Bette Midler-meets-Sandra Bernhard, he suggests, albeit if they could freestyle). Once a 16-year-old New York City runaway, Blanco has officially called Gotham home since 2008. &amp;quot;The downtown community embraced me, and I gave back,&amp;quot; he explains, before spitting a few lyrics across the table at me to illustrate the &amp;quot;fabulously broke&amp;quot; life of a downtown artist: &amp;quot;One night I&amp;#039;m drinking champagne with Linda Evangelista, the next night I&amp;#039;m eating one dollar pizza.&amp;quot; But Blanco, who boasts an interdisciplinary art background and comes from a single-parent home, has no issue admitting a desire to overcome the broke artist stereotype. &amp;quot;As much as I want my work to read with integrity and to touch people in a humble and honest way, I also love glamour and I also have no problem being careerist because I come from a background where you are supposed to succeed,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Why would I not want to be more successful than both of my parents? We all want the vacation house for mom.&amp;quot; The dream might not be a stretch if things continue to go his way. Mykki Blanco was born in December 2010 as a &amp;quot;humorous&amp;quot; interactive video project in which Quattlebaum aptly portrayed a teenage female rapper. &amp;quot;I was doing it YouTube interactive style. You know, how girls do haul videos and talk to their, like, YouTube subscribers,&amp;quot; he says with a throaty chuckle, in his best Valley Girl voice. But it was the theatrical poetry readings from last summer&amp;#039;s OHWOW gallery-published book, From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys, that really kicked things off. He worked the downtown gallery circuit giving readings and striking many a pose in head-to-toe typical Blanco garb. &amp;quot;It allowed me to see that writing poetry could be turned to song.&amp;quot; Things have been seriously nutty for the artist ever since. &amp;quot;I understand that it can be hard for people to pigeonhole what I&amp;#039;m doing,&amp;quot; Quattlebaum says. His upcoming projects include a 7-inch two-sided record produced by OHWOW Gallery, a punk and industrial-tinged concept album, Mykki Blanco and the Mutant Angels, and, of course, the aforementioned mix-tape. &amp;quot;But if you wanna tie me into anything, I relate most to the old New York\u2014the Bette Midler&amp;#039;s, the Liza Minelli&amp;#039;s\u2014I&amp;#039;m an entertainer, I&amp;#039;m entertaining.&amp;quot; Quattlebaum is, not surprisingly, into fashion. &amp;quot;Queer theorists and art critics like to add this discourse to my cross-dressing, but I cross-dress because I look hot, men think I look hot and I enjoy the attention. Cross-dressing opened up my sexual life a thousand percent,&amp;quot; he says, smiling. But is he worried that the world outside of downtown Manhattan is ready for his alter ego? &amp;quot;People may have their prejudices, people may have their phobias, but when you&amp;#039;re talented, no one denies the talent. What can you do? What can you say?&amp;quot; Breaking stereotypes, starting a dialogue, creating art all the while causing a riot\u2014it&amp;#039;s what Quattlebaum&amp;#039;s trying to do, with the help of Blanco. &amp;quot;Right now, I have the pedigree that a lot of these up-and-coming girls would kill for,&amp;quot; he says with bracing candor. &amp;quot;This is my job and I don&amp;#039;t have to be fake. You gotta knock the humbleness off because this is the entertainment business,&amp;quot; he says before heading off for a busy weekend that includes an afternoon shoot with Ryan McGinley and a sea-creature-inspired music video shoot. &amp;quot;When it comes down to it, I&amp;#039;m a bad bitch, and I&amp;#039;m gonna continue to be one.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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