“I’ve Been Sex-Obsessed For Years Now”: 10 Minutes With Malice K at the Erotic Art Fair

 

SUNDAY 4:43 PM SEPTEMBER 21, 2025 RIDGEWOOD

It’s a sunny day in Ridgewood and hardcore smut fans in latex, mesh, harnesses, and the occasional gimp suit sweat through their black clothes in the courtyard of Brooklyn’s TV Eye. Sunday marked Please Knock’s third annual Erotic Art Fair—a one-day bacchanal of vintage girlie mags, old-school porno, rare collectibles, and anything obscene or X-rated. It was here, next to a booth of fetish action figures, where Malice K dropped his latest work: grotesque, macabre sketches that serve as twisted manifestations of his own internal battle between love and lust. For this week’s installment of Smoke Break, we stepped outside with the cult-favorite singer-songwriter to smoke a Parliament by the dumpster. “I’ve been sex-obsessed for years now,” he said. “But I’m realizing that so many of my sexual inhibitions were related to me being on drugs and drinking.” Inside, however, it’s sex in your face—or on a cracker, as one screen loops a video of three buff, mustachioed guys ejaculating onto bread rolls. But the 29-year-old isn’t really in that place right now. Instead, he’s thinking about his sobriety, and what it means to stop giving himself away so easily.

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ALESSANDRA SCHADE: Okay, we’re at the Erotic Art Fair at TV Eye. Why are you here today?

MALICE K: I’m showing some artwork.

SCHADE: I saw it. It’s very erotic and also fairly dark. I’m curious, what motivates you more, sex or death?

MALICE K: Like, motivates me to create?

SCHADE: Mm-hmm.

MALICE K: Well, death was definitely the original motivator as a child, but I didn’t really start drawing erotic art until later on when I was a teenager. 

SCHADE: What were those drawings like, the first ones you ever made?

MALICE K: A lot of skulls. I was really obsessed with human anatomy and mummies and things like that. When I was five, the birthday cake I wanted was the anatomy picture of the body, where it’s showing all the organs and the skeleton.

SCHADE: That’s a birthday cake you wanted?

MALICE K: Yeah, when I was in kindergarten. It’s always been something that I was disturbed by, and I’ve always been drawn to things that give me that feeling. Also, I don’t really know how much I even consider the art to be erotic. There’s not really that much depiction of a sexual interaction. It’s usually a solo character who is dealing with their own sense of sexuality. I’m more representing an internal struggle, and it’s usually my own. I just barely cross that line of being considered erotic. A lot of the stuff here is very much BDSM and penetration. 

SCHADE: It’s very explicit here. The sex is very in your face, like holes and penetration.

MALICE K: Right.

SCHADE: Is that a turn-on for you? Or are you more into a little bit of mystery?

MALICE K: I definitely like what’s not shown and that psychological aspect of it. I’m not really that partial to smut, and it’s nothing against my fellow artists that are showing at the fair. But I view that stuff as a little bit easy, because that stuff will always get a reaction. 

SCHADE: Shock value.

MALICE K: Yeah, I think that the obscene stuff can be a little bit manipulative or something. Like the movie Saw, where you show something that speaks to a baseline feeling in all people like, “Yeah, I don’t want to see that.” So you’re going to get that reaction every time.

SCHADE: So what are some less explicit themes and tropes or images that are a turn-on for you?

MALICE K: I don’t really know. I don’t really look at art to arouse me. Sexuality is its own separate thing and I don’t really like when there’s a crossover. 

SCHADE: Interesting. I feel like I’ve met Alex, the artist, today. And there’s Malice K, the music project. Do these two people know each other? Are they the same? 

MALICE K: A little bit. I’ve always been a pretty sexual person. Ever since I was a child, it’s been something that preoccupied me a lot. But I always had a sense of shame around that emotion. Malice K created a world for me where I could explore my sexuality. It’s not every single song, but there’s a lot of songs that describe this confusion revolving around sex-addiction. 

SCHADE: You’re about to go on tour where you’ll be in a van for a month. What does romance and intimacy look like when you’re on the road? 

MALICE K: I have no idea what that looks like. I got out of a long-term relationship recently, so now I’m most concerned about doing a good job at the shows and building my career. I’ve been sex-obsessed for years now. Not even as a brag, but I have people that want to have sex with me because they like my music, and that’s something that I’m not viewing as a benefit of the trade or whatever. I’m working on my sobriety and stuff right now, and I’m realizing that so many of my sexual inhibitions were related to me being on drugs and drinking a lot. It’s weird, an exploration of my sobriety now is me exploring my sexuality, and I don’t really know what that looks like. I never really had an opportunity to explore growing up because I was in a small town. I knew I would have to put way more effort into forming relationships and trust to have sex. I didn’t have that ability to be spontaneous. So being a musician and getting attention in New York now, that’s something that I can do.

SCHADE: It’s interesting to be at this erotic art fair at this point in your journey.

MALICE K: Yeah, and that’s fine. I’m not in a situation where I’m trying to pray away the temptation or something. Being in a small town and in a situation where I couldn’t have these spontaneous sexual experiences, I thought, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me, and I need to repress this feeling.” Then doing the Malice K thing was like, “You know what? I don’t know what’s right or wrong, but I’m just going to own it.” I’m just focusing on my sobriety and on not giving away my sexuality so easily. That’s something that I’ve never done before, and it’s nothing that I could ever confidently do without wondering what that’s like. It’s going to take a minute.