The video for ‘High School Never Ends’ – the lead single from Mykki Blanco’s new album, MYKKI, coming out on 16 September on Dogfood Music Group – is a Shakespearean tragedy of the modern environment. Replace Verona with rural Germany, and the Montague’s and Capulet’s with a household of skinheads pitted against Blanco’s sustainable farmhouse aesthetic.
A tale of xenophobia and racism – intolerance and outsiders – it narrates the fate of forbidden romance which, as you might expect, ends in violence, death and heartbreak. The story is intense, at times so much so it’s hard to keep your eyes open (yeah – slight warning for the soft hearted), the cinematography is exceptional, by any standards, but especially in the rap space that Blanco often lands feet first into. Heavy strings weave throughout the track and support the densely emotional investment that evidently went into the production. We’ve probably all caught ourselves – tired of a situation you thought would be done and finished once school was done, lessons learnt, and teenage years passed – but Blanco poetically reflects that gender, immigration, sexuality, race are fought out, daily, in the playground of contemporary life. We’ve been yearn to bring Mykki Blanco back, which might be happening sooner rather than later…