RA Podcast

The US musician, poet and performance artist reflects on "queer rap,” the industry that boxed him into it and the reinvention he's built on the other side.

A consummate multi-hyphenate, Mykki Blanco (formerly she/her, now he/him) came up in a specific New York moment: the early '10s crossover between queer nightlife, noise and a rap underground that was just beginning to loosen its grip on who was allowed inside. Alongside artists like Le1f, Zebra Katz and Cakes da Killa, Blanco was lumped into a "queer rap" wave that acquired a cult following around the world, propped up MySpace and Tumblr.

The co-signs came fast and from unlikely places. Blanco opened shows for Björk, Diplo and Major Lazer, collaborated with Madonna and spent seven months working closely with Kanye West. But he stayed outside the mainstream—partly by design, and partly because the industry of that era wasn't willing to let a Black queer rapper be anything other than a Black queer rapper.

In this Exchange, Blanco reflects on the music industry's prejudices and limitations, and on how he's risen above them. After a few years off the touring circuit, he's back with a new album and a new sound. Café Paradiso, out in early September, is shaped less by the aggression that fuelled his early work, and more by solitude and mid-career reflection. He talks about his reinvention and more: the freedom that's come from leaving rap, the blueprint he laid for a whole generation of queer artists coming up behind him and what working with West actually looked like from the inside. Listen to the episode in full.

The titan of UK bass delivers a head trip through dub's past, present and future, one year on from RA.1000.Time has a way of slipping through the fingers.

A year ago, RA.1000 marked the 1,000th release in the RA Mix series. Now, 52 weeks on, we've arrived at RA.1052—and first up is Kevin Richard Martin, AKA The Bug, finally making his long-awaited debut on the series.

Ask anyone who's stood within earshot of a soundsystem he's operating: Martin doesn't so much make music as engineer entire weather systems. His music demands total immersion, from the earthquake-like bass weight of anthems like "Skeng" and "Poison Dart" to the post-apocalyptic pull of his slower steppers. As he told RBMA in 2018: "The more music becomes relegated to a cheap accessory, the less people will realise there's great magic in music as a form."

For his RA Mix debut, Martin delivers "nocturnal dives into the city with memories of Blade Runner on repeat." A tribute to PRESSURE, his Berlin night, RA.1052 runs through Porter Ricks, Dillinja and Tikiman, charting dub's kaleidoscopic range — from Basic Channel's minimalism to K Wata's sleek bass science.

A year ago, RA.1000 looked back on two decades since 2006. RA.1052 picks up the torch and keeps walking. See you here again next year.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1071
@thebugofficial

Decades after walking away from trance, the superstar DJ unpicks the machinery behind his own brand, and what a career spent at the top actually costs.

Tiësto has been one of the biggest DJs in the world for the better part of 30 years. Since the '90s, the Dutch artist has been part of an elite inner circle who dominate major festival bills, residencies in Ibiza and Las Vegas, and command some of the most astronomical fees in the industry. Even if he isn't part of your regular listening diet, you've almost certainly heard his music on the radio or pouring out of bars and clubs around the world.

It's easy to forget, though, that he made his name in trance—a genre he publicly walked away from more than a decade ago, saying he'd done what he wanted with it and wouldn't be going back. As of this summer, he's finally changed his mind, announcing his return with a set at Silverworks Island in London.

In this Exchange, he talks about being inspired by the new wave of trance DJs and the artists putting a modern twist on the genre. He also reflects on the years before Tiësto was Tiësto: cleaning club bathrooms, selling records to Jeff Mills as a young store clerk, producing gabber under a secret alias and being inspired to take up DJing after seeing Sven Väth play live. Listen to the episode in full.

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist.

When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense.

Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm.

At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once.

Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070

@mietzeconte

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist.

When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense.

Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte, AKA Matthias Oldofredi, offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm.

At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once.

Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070
@mietzeconte