Welcome to Young Miko’s World
Young Miko is relaxing on a Saturday afternoon when I reach her on Zoom. Given that she’s about to kick off her first-ever world tour in Guatemala later that night, it’s hardly a regular Saturday, though. “I’m resting as much as I can,” says the Puerto Rican artist, 24. “I’ve been so busy that it wasn’t until two days ago that I realized I’m starting the tour.”
Since releasing her EP Trap Kitty in 2022, Miko has upended the sound of Latin trap with bouncy tracks and incomparable Spanglish lyricism. On Spotify, she’s amassed over 20 million monthly listeners, despite having only been in the scene since 2021, and her music videos for hits like “Riri” and “Lisa” have garnered 50 million views on YouTube. Karol G, Ivy Queen, and Camila Cabello have all endorsed the artist. “Everything in my life has changed,” Miko says.
She also has the support of Bad Bunny, who tells Rolling Stone that she’s a rising act he’s had his eye on for a while. “Young Miko is a new face that’s breaking through, and I like her a lot,” he says. ” I feel like she has so much to show people, like she hasn’t showed people all her tricks yet.”
Much of her star power lies in her music’s mix of hyper-femme aesthetics with raunchy lyrics that speak directly to women. Even in 2023, that’s groundbreaking. But just a few years ago, Miko was just María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano from the northwestern town of Añasco, a birthplace she shares with the reggaeton diva Ivy Queen. She grew up a fan of comic books, Buddhist texts, and shows like the Avatar sequel The Legend of Korra. She dabbled into writing at her Catholic school in Mayagüez, where she’d scribble poems for fun, always imagining a girl on the other side of her words. “I always wrote about women, but it was just for me,” Miko says. “I still use so much of what I learned in those high school classes.”
Soon, Miko started thinking about sharing her writing with the world. Around 2020, she began downloading beats from YouTube and rapping her own lyrics over them, eventually posting them on Soundcloud (she assures me they’ve now been archived, but can still be found on YouTube). She also got into tattooing, a job she kept for four years, to pay the bills and studio time. “Sometimes I miss it,” she says. “You connect with clients in a deep way because you end up doing tattoos that are really special, and they’d even cry.” Miko is covered in tattoos herself. Her favorite is a dragon she has on her back, describing the design as a “jealous and passionate Scorpio.”
Miko’s first official track didn’t come until 2021, when she released the “105 Freestyle,” a catchy trap track that started on a beach in the west of Puerto Rico and was produced by Caleb Calloway, the fellow Puerto Rican responsible for some of Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro’s biggest hits. She quickly followed up with “Vendetta,” alongside Villano Antillano, and “Puerto Rican Mami,” in which she laid the groundwork for the female celebration that would eventually become Trap Kitty.
Released under Wave Music Group, the nine-song EP is set inside a strip club in Puerto Rico, with its main character Riri — based on one of Miko’s best friends, who is a pole dancer — going from the dressing room to the dance floor. “I wanted to get into her world,” Miko says. “Everyone needs a friend like Riri, the most confident woman I know, a trap kitty.”
Miko’s universe is filled with women like Riri. Throughout her career, she’s built a world of heroines, both ones she’s created and ones from pop culture, extending their reach with each song she drops. Another such character is Lisa, the unidentified baddie in her recent hit of the same name, who Miko says embodies “all of us.” On “Puerto Rican Mami,” she also name-drops Asami Sato, from The Legend of Korra, another figure of female strength that she’s drawn to. “They inspire me like a kid with superheroes,” she says.
Meanwhile, her career has kept moving at a quick pace. Her collaborations include urbano heavy-hitters Arcángel and Yandel, plus newer acts like Feid, Cazzu, and Nicki Nicole. Last year, she also made a cameo in Bad Bunny’s sold out concert at San Juan’s Choliseo, where a euphoric audience asked for an encore. She also hosted her own free-entry festival, aptly named Trap Kitty, in September 2022, inviting local acts such as Yovngchimi, Luar la L, and Villano Antillano to play for nearly 10,000 people — a record-breaking audience at the famed Concha Acústica in Mayagüez. More recently, she took the stage at Puerto Rico’s biggest arena, the Hiram Bithorn Stadium, to sing “Riri” with Karol G. The Colombian singer had spotted Miko in the crowd at the Calibash festival a few weeks earlier and spontaneously rapped Miko’s “Putero.” “I couldn’t believe what was happening,” Miko says. “She’s such a big artist, she has no reason to do that for me.”
As she passes milestone after milestone, Miko says her success has come from simply throwing herself into whatever she’s most afraid of. Being one of the very few openly lesbian rappers in a male-dominated and predominantly hetero industry is certainly one of them, especially in the urbano scene, which has been marked by decades of exclusive boys’-club camaraderie. But Miko says it was never an option to hide who she is — and the payoff is worth the free dive. “My music is for the girlies and the they/thems,” she says. “Having the courage to talk about how I feel and what I actually like is what makes my project so different.”