Milo

In 1992 Chicago witnessed the birth of Rory Ferreira, later known to audiences as rapper Milo. Young parents facing turbulent circumstances shaped his earliest years, during which he shuttled between schools and cities across Maine, Wisconsin, and Illinois before completing high school. Exposure to Nas as a preteen ignited his interest in rap, and by the time he reached secondary school he had joined the Wisconsin hip-hop collective Nom de Rap, performing under the name Milo. Ferreira has supplied differing accounts of the moniker’s origin, tying it in certain conversations to an earlier alias, “Wise Owl, Himself,” and in others to the phrase “Maybe I Like Owls.” While contributing to Nom de Rap efforts, he issued his debut mixtape, I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here, in 2011. Committed from the start to an independent, anti-commercial path, he distributed his work without major-label machinery, steadily attracting listeners by refining an idiosyncratic, deeply personal style rather than assembling managers, producers, or stylists. Each subsequent release enlarged his audience, bringing a steady flow of projects that encompassed the 2012 mixtape Milo Takes Baths, the paired 2013 EPs Things That Happen at Day and Things That Happen at Night, and more fully realized albums such as 2014’s A Toothpaste Suburb and 2015’s So the Flies Don’t Come, alongside further recordings. Under the name Scallops Hotel he also issued several albums of experimental hip-hop. Many of these works appeared on limited-edition cassettes through his own Ruby Yacht imprint and rapidly became scarce collectibles. His most ambitious full-length to date, Who Told You to Think??!!?!?!?, arrived in 2017, followed the next year by Budding Ornithologists Are Weary of Tired Analogies.