This week Milo released one of the best Milwaukee hip-hop albums of the year, So The Flies Don’t Come, which takes the rapper’s philosophical poetry into the realm of the political. In a profile in this week’s issue of the Shepherd, Milo explains that he was inspired to make the album in order to confront his predominantly white audience, particularly the listeners who pushed back whenever he spoke out online about police brutality against African Americans.
“This was around the time it was when the conversation around race relations in our country was starting to get really intense, and I was finding that if I had anything to say about it online, there were people trying to put me in my place,” Milo explained in the interview. “These were people who maybe bought every record I’ve made and who have been to my shows in their city, and they were telling me how offended they were that I had anything to say about Darrien Hunt or Renisha McBride or whatever.”
I wanted to share an exchange from our conversation that didn’t make the article, since it touches on subjects that I don't see addressed all that often.
This is a question I like to ask black musicians, because it’s something I think about a lot, and I’ve never received a completely satisfying answer to it: What do white fans owe hip-hop? How can a white person be a responsible fan of hip-hop?
What does a white fan owe hip-hop? I think the white fan owes hip-hop unbridled love. That’s all. I find that I can connect with any hip-hop fan, white or whatever, so long as they have a genuine love for the art. It's once they start having these weird, bizarre opinions about how a black artist should behave that they lose me. That's when it's like, ‘Oh, you thought you were a puppeteer and I was your entertainer!’ But I would say love, man. That's what they owe hip-hop. Love. Unbridled love. Compassion, empathy.
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Is that really enough, though?
Yeah. That would be great. There are things that nobody teaches anyone, I guess, so I can't blame certain people for not having those capacities.
You’ve got a line on the album about white fans singing the N-word. Vince Staples has a similar line on his album, and I love hearing rappers address that, because it’s not an easy thing to bring up. If you're an artist with a primarily white fanbase, you're sort of biting that hand that feeds in some way, right?
I mean, I guess I would like the refuse the idea that that hand is feeding me. I'm feeding that hand. I make this very particular kind of rap that nobody else does. If you fuck with Milo, it's for a reason. So I guess I would like to break that idea down. I am not being feed by any of these people. I am feeding them.
So there's no fear of alienating the fans?
No, that's ridiculous. Man, I'm not a fucking company. That’s something that bothers me now, is people talk about art in those ways, like, ‘Oh, are you afraid of alienating people?’ No. I'm not a brand, man. I make real art that comes from a genuine place. How it’s received has nothing to do with me. It's the process that matters.
You'd be surprised how many artists don't think that way.
Yeah, because there's Internet bills. I get it.
And they want to play colleges, they want a fanbase. And it’s something a lot of artists struggle with, ‘How do I make sure my fans don’t dictate what I do?’ There’s a natural instinct to say, ‘This track popped; I’ll make more that sound like it,’ and gradually you can get steered away from whatever your original vision was.
But all of those trappings are trappings of capitalism, not art. ‘This got a good response, so let’s continue doing it.’ That’s something you would say at a fucking factory: ‘People like the extra buttery popcorn, as opposed to the normal, so let’s keep making it.’ I don’t care about any of that stuff. I just avoid that shit.
How do you feel like you fit into the Milwaukee rap scene these days?
Same. I feel like the phantom of the fucking opera here. I'm just a weird, bizarre lunatic, is what I feel like.
How come?
Because I don't want to pander, man. I want my art's integrity to really stand tall and true. So I don't engage in making music the way a lot of other people do. I've been to shows here where black artists have told entirely white audiences say they want to hear them say the N-word. That's not something I feel like I could ever be associated with, something like that.
I feel like that's something white audiences want to hear black artists tell them. They want to be brought in; they want to be included.
Oh, no doubt. And that’s what we were talking about earlier. That artists know that. The artists are doing it because they want to be paid, they want people to come to the show. And that was at the Public House! And they have a huge banner that says “Black Lives Matter,” but there's a black guy on stage asking all these white people to say 'nigger.' And you're like, this is a crazy paradox! He's like, 'If I write it, you got to say it!' I'm like, ‘what kind of bizarre paradox am I in right now?’ I’m in this building full of these people who say they care, and they're doing what he says, and he’s doing what he thinks they want, and none of it is true. It's just weird. It’s fucking weird.
Stream So The Flies Don't Come Below.
