The quality of a rap artist or album is usually measured in two separate aspects: lyrics and beats. I wonder why originality is not oftenly considered as a capital facet, when its the basic element to refresh any style.
Well, recently ive come across three artists that are competely washing the face of hip hop, and putting down some of it´s most denigrating stereotypes. One is Doomtree, another is Aesop Rock, and here we have Milo.
Milo puts on top of the table the very essence of rap: to be a rapper, you just have to want to write and rhyme and combine the bassed rhythms as you want. You can write about whatever you want, mixtape and collage the sounds you like. Don´t have to be a show-off, chain hanging egocentric fame addict who only raps about how good they live in their huge mansions making big money and chics. Commercial rap has built up the imaginary of hip hop as a gansgter promoting, homophobic, misogenist and superficial genre, with videoclips and lyrics that could be reduced to five words: money, chics, guns, chains, gangster. None of these things define rap in any way.
Actually Milo sells his albums at 1$ if not for free. "I´ll always be poor thats why i keep the taxes low".
The interesting reflexion about Milo´s concept of rap is that he puts his whole self at stake. Hobbies, thoughts, worries, hates, relations, personal issues... he nudes his soul out completely. That´s what an artist does, he doesn´t care what others might think, he is totally personal. From that point on, you can like his raps or not, but you can´t take away his artistic integrity.
His raps verse about society from a phylosophic point of view (it´s his passion), the actual sphere of the tecnological era, pulling actual idols of the mass-media occidental culture down to a ground level. He kind of constructs an own world relating everything that´s in his life. The rap language he speaks is full of phylosophic, literary, film, freaky and videogame quotes, totally conected to the social networks, critizes television and the actual rap scene, talks about his school years, relationships, people he admires, his position society, in rap... he really is very contemporary, that´s why i like his style so much, cos he is able to unite and make sense to all this sparse things happening in society from his own persona giving some sort of meaning to his experience in culture. Also because his sincerity makes him a close and normal (or what should be more normal) person.
Besides the original thematics of his lyrics, add his ironic tone of writting not taking hismself too seriously and not caring to be considered a nerd. His style of beats is full of samplings, constructed like mixtapes, very electronic, nothing i´ve ever heard in hip hop. He composes music with such freedom you can really expect anything.
Everything that appeals to him is pretty original, his music is distributed digitally on bandcamp at a ridiculous price, and you can stream it for free. http://miloraps.bandcamp.com/
If you don´t like commercial or conventional rap, try Milo.