Mykki Blanco

On Café Paradiso, Mykki Blanco is completely reborn, trading the persona-driven theatrics of his previous releases for something more interior and exacting. The record draws from the diverse, banal and yet idiosyncratic contexts of the artist’s life in transit: “...shitty Wall Street lunch counters and an endless stream of dive bars in the East Village” in New York; “...drinking beer and playing pool in Belleville; the drink that lasts forever at Les Chope des Artists and Chez Jeanette” in Paris; and “languishing for hours at the tea houses or Café Hafa” in Tangier. From these fragments, Café Paradiso assembles a soundtrack for the contemporary, queer flâneur, moving through spaces where being alone does not necessarily mean being lonely. “Café Paradiso is a record for artsy kids,” Blanco explains, “for my cosmopolitan aesthetes to sit alone in a café and work on crafting the life of their dreams, or just make sense of it!” When asked which earlier versions of himself appear here, Blanco is unequivocal: “None.”

Café Paradiso does not mark a rupture so much as a refinement in the career of Mykki Blanco. Drawing together years of experimentation across music, performance, and visual art, this album arrives at a point of transient clarity — it is a confident statement of intent, positioning Blanco not simply as a shape-shifter, but as an artist in full command of his present form.