Sasha Velour ranks her favourite drag queens of all time | PopBuzz Meets

By Woodrow Whyte

Sasha ranks her favourite queens while painting a self-portrait on Portrait Mode.

As she once joked on stage during the RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 finale, "if you look in a mirror and talk about sad things, Sasha Velour appears behind you to give a queer history lecture". But you don't need to be sad for Sasha to give you a queer history 101 - she'll do it midway through an art class too.

Drag Race's most eloquent and fiercely creative champion, Sasha Velour, stopped by PopBuzz HQ to promote her upcoming Smoke & Mirrors tour and so we took the opportunity to soak up Sasha's knowledge and wisdom in our latest video feature Portrait Mode.

READ MORE: QUIZ: Which RuPaul's Drag Race Queen Are You, Really?

The concept is simple: Sasha paints a self portrait (based on an adorable Instagram photo with her dog Vanya) while pondering on introspective questions about life, art and, of course, drag. And Sasha showed off her impressive history skills when asked about her all time favourite drag queens.

Sasha Velour RuPaul's Drag Race winner season 9. Picture: Sasha Velour/Netflix

"My favourite drag queens of all time? Number one has to be Lypsinka," said Sasha. "She absolutely transformed what a drag performance was in the 80s and 90s in New York. The reason that people put spoken word in their lip syncs is because of Lypsinka and if I can have even half that legacy as a drag performer, I would feel proud."

"Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, trans drag performers, who led the Stonewall riots. Unless they weren’t there - no one quite knows what happened that night! But they definitely led the activist uprising that followed and transformed the early gay rights movement into an intersectional queer activist alliance, which we still need to learn lessons from.

She then added:"Divine, RuPaul, Julian Eltinge and performers who have been able to cross into the mainstream, giving little kids like me someone a little queer to look up to." Amen to that!

Hit play on the video at the top of this page to watch the full interview and then head over to our YouTube channel where you can find more videos, including our chat with Sasha from 2018 where she took on The Most Impossible Drag Race quiz.