Photography by M. Sharkey

One of this year's most mystifying moments in music arrived when NYC drag rapper Mykki Blanco (born Michael Quattlebaum Jr.) appeared in the video for the song "Join My Militia" stumbling around the woods in a shaggy wig, holding a bottle of whisky and a cigarette, and spitting out the corker of a line "I didn't know my man was in the Taliban." Since then, Blanco's gotten plenty of ink in trend stories discussing the new queer hip-hop movement, but the performer's jolting, outrageous persona has more in common with '90s shock maestros like Marilyn Manson and Lil' Kim. Blanco ended 2012 with the release of a dance-driven mixtape, Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss.

Photographed at the Electric Room in the Dream Downtown Hotel in New York City on August 21, 2012