Alt Nerd Rap Dispatch

"I went to school to become a philosopher 

but dropped out to be a sober Kid Cudi imposter."

Milo is a rapper, notorious by his nerdity, and nearly absurd by the fact he has rapped about the time he (might have, allegedly) cried on an internet message board due to real world awkwardness. He exists somewhere in the altstream of rap, in the neighbourhood of Open Mike Eagle, Billy Woods, and Busdriver (there's a strange proximity to Kool A.D. with less psychedelia).

Milo's verses are accomplishments in multisyllabic delivery, and if his vocabulary isn't as large as Aesop Rock's, he's closing the gap at an alarming rate. He may well represent the pinnacle of that most critical subgenre, Nerd Rap. He might also represent alt rap's great hope – a sublime counterpoint to everything that ever buried intelligence in favor of style.

Not to say that Milo is the answer, that an answer is needed, or that mainstream rap are necessarily unwoke. Milo is a rap moniker or nom de rap for Rory Ferriera, born in Chicago, raised in Maine, and lately an L.A. [un]based vegetarian, touring at the time of this writing. Seems to like Vonnegut, definitely read his philosophical tracts at some point, and pointedly represents the defiant vanguard of rap. Nerd territory stuff.

"That's when I flashed an odd smile and said

 I only wear argyle."

I am personally of the opinion, speaking merely for myself, that Milo is a breath of fresh air in a game that often smells a bit stale. For an artist whose name, when it crossed the barrier of youtube recommendations, seemed like a 5 alarm douche artist... I could imagine pastel shorts (a Young Republican-themed rap group would pleasantly floor me). 

Despite pastel delusions, curiosity prevailed (buttressed by previous results from Youtube's fairly on point algorithms), and I travelled into the askew gravitas of the mixtape. I was playing Age of Wonders and taking a break from school and the combination with Milo's verbose, nerdy, insanely wistful, self-deprecating-yet-swaggering tracks was heavenly. He rapped about wizards while goblins charged suicidally at giants and centuars, and pitched battles raged under fairly chill and accomplished production and rhymes about the kind of internet socializing that doesn't involve Facebook et al.

It's interesting to hear raps about eschewing intoxication and pursuing knowledge; bragadocio about trading one intoxication for the love of another more fortifying one. Travelling between humorous jests at modern society and prevailing mores; moralistic alarm wrapped in stream of consciousness and sincere disbursment, Milo spends a mixtape on a sojourn into reflections and references. Very exciting stuff, even if the amount of syllables packed into lines can make meters a little awkward from time to time

Personally I was won over by lyrics and charm, but there's real skill behind the facade. Just pull up any of his songs, and even if the subject and content leave you unimpressed, you have to admit panache when it aches. One would be tempted to say it was all smart kid raps and alienation poems sung aloud for a likeminded audience, and sometimes it is, but there's real talent on display, allusions to varied greats, and meaning rich with dissidence.

Sure there are grimace-worthy young-intellectual rebuffs of social media (that often veer over the line of comically hackneyed and trite - ah the irony) and modern culture, but I'd rather hear the worst of what Milo can do than the best of Top 40, and that's the audience Milo writes for, and knows, and who appreciate his efforts anyway. He was never going to sway the banger crowd anyway. It would be cool to hear a song about the changing length of attention spans and what they portend, but that might not happen.

Last-second-googling reveals that lots of nerd rap can cause eyes to roll quickly enough to cause temporary blindness, so I guess it's rightfully relegated to distant margins, and Milo (at least at the outset) embraced the genre as his own, seemed to potentiate and grow it, offering wider, more nuanced, and less gratuitous horizons. The nerd is trending, but Milo's addition to the genre is obtuse to Trend Nerd without being overtly hostile... it's sublimely inaccessible because it's true to itself and sufficient like that. It allows for a wide gulf between the nonsense of other alt rap subgenres along the nerd line like chap hop.

 Milo may namedrop NVidia but he won't write a song about DNS protocol (which classical nerd rap wouldn't do either, I'm guessing). He would probably also shake his head at the very notion of pirate rap, and I'd be lying if I said I don't agree.

Instrumentally, the mix tape rarely lost my ears, and borrows vibes from Gold Panda (who I discovered through Milo) which it uses to great effect. The thing sounds good when you listen to it,

All of these useless and stumbling words to say that I'm back, in the interim I probably listened to a bit of music, and I'm at least three times as talented as ever.