Music

O
ne of the first people Young Miko ever showed her music to was her best friend, Mariana López Crespo. The two of them had been at a small bar in Puerto Rico years ago when Young Miko — who was a tattoo artist back then — shared how badly she wanted to be an artist.

“She was like, ‘Do you have anything on you?’” Young Miko recalls, remembering how she handed her friend a pair of headphones and played her earliest songs. “She was like ‘This is dope! You should take this seriously.’” Right then and there, they decided that López Crespo would be her manager. As they left the bar, they drove past El Choli, the famed arena in Puerto Rico that everyone from Marc Anthony to Bad Bunny has played. “We were both looking at it and I remember just being like, ‘Could you imagine if we do that one day?’ And she was like ‘I know you will.’”

Her manager was right — and now, almost seven years since she began dropping music, Miko announced that her dream is coming true and she’s headlining El Choli in December. “I get emotional just thinking about it,” she tells Rolling Stone on a recent call. The show will cap off a giant year that has included opening for Billie Eilish’s tour and dropping her second album. The LP, titled Do Not Disturb, came out on Friday, just one day before her 28th birthday.

Do Not Disturb is a step-up for Miko that plays with early 2000s inspirations, hotel imagery, and even a surprise Lil Jon cameo. In a long-ranging conversation with Rolling Stone, Miko shared how the album came together during a difficult time, what she’s learned from Eilish’s tour, and why she can’t wait to play that long-awaited show at El Choli.

You’re currently on tour opening for Billie Eilish. What’s that been like and how have the shows been going?
The tour has been super fun. Billie really, truly has amazing fans. They’ve made it a point to make sure I have fun when I’m out there, because I know that most of them don’t speak any Spanish, but I feel like they’ve been doing their homework, and they’ve been dancing and just having a blast with me before her set. I’ve had the greatest time up there. Plus, it’s so special and an honor to be able to share the same stage as her.

What’s the chemistry like between you and Billie?
She’s really sweet. She’s really funny, she’s easy to talk to. She’s been busy on this tour so I haven’t really spent a lot of time with her, but I have watched her shows and she always takes the time at the end of the show to make a special shout out [for us]. Her team is really special. And you can tell she’s having a blast as well on tour. She loves being on stage. She makes her fans laugh all the time. She’s hilarious.

What was your relationship to her music before? Do you have favorite songs of hers that you’re enjoying seeing her do live?
100 percent. I’d been listening to her music because I have a younger brother that’s a huge fan of hers, and I have close friends that are huge fans of hers. So even if I didn’t open up my phone and look up her album, it was always playing around me.

When I knew we were going to be on this tour, I had already heard Hit Me Hard and Soft and I loved it. I’ve been listening to her album again and it got stuck again on my rotation. I’ve watched about three or four nights over, almost every night I’ve performed, and every single night, it’s super special. You can tell she has a different connection to each crowd she’s in front of and she’s just super talented. She sounds just as good when she’s live. It’s been such a fun ride. I’m flying my little brother out for the last New York shows and I got him one of the vinyls. He’s super excited.

What was it like to perform songs from Do Not Disturb and give fans that first preview during the tour?
This tour specifically was already sold out when they announced the opener. There wasn’t really a way where people could have been like, “Oh, Young Miko is opening, I’m gonna go!” Her fans were locked in. So I was already thinking, like, “How can I involve my fans and her fans?”  And it’s been really special to see them interact online. They’re becoming like sister fandoms.

When it came to songs like “Likey Likey,” I taught the crowd the chorus a bit before I dropped it so they could sing it with me. It’s such an easy chorus because it’s just three kisses, and then you blow a kiss. The crowd was engaged and felt like they were a part of it. And I’ve been seeing more and more Puerto Rican flags in the crowd. I’m leaving with at least 10 new friends from every show.

Why do you think the fandoms get along so well?
Both are really young fandoms. And I think Billie and I maybe have a similar clothing aesthetic or a similar vibe to each other. And I just feel that they’ve been relating to one another. Her fans are super, super engaged with her. My fans are really engaged with me.

How are you feeling about your album Do Not Disturb dropping?
It’s a pretty introspective project and it was a really big growth process for me personally and obviously artistically. So I’m just excited for the fans to have even more pieces of me where they get to know me. My friends always say I’m like a Pandora’s box. There’s layers and you never know what you’re going to get. This album is no exception.

When we were creating the album, I was in a weird place. I didn’t really know where I was standing emotionally and creatively. I didn’t really understand what I wanted to do next with my music and, frankly, as a human. When we were talking about the title, I really felt like I needed it to be short and sweet and to be able to encapsulate everything in that moment. Frankly, Do Not Disturb was what I did: I was putting the world on mute. I was tuning out opinions and commentaries and putting outside expectations on mute and choosing myself or over anything. Before, I wasn’t listening to myself, I wasn’t taking my time with myself, I wasn’t being patient with my heart and my mental state at the time. And once we came up with the “do not disturb” phrase, everything sort of fell into place.

You had massive breakthroughs and become a star. But what was it leading up to this album that made you tune everything else out?
There were a lot of things in play that were affecting how I was feeling. I had just dropped att. and then we had done Coachella. We were talking about the tour, and the album was coming out, and it was a pretty hectic time. We did a lot of touring. I spent about six months away from Puerto Rico, the longest I had ever been outside of the island. I was away from my parents, and it was just a really full workload. I started realizing that I was moving on autopilot, and I feel like I was moving away from myself a little bit. And I started to realize that there was all this noise in my head, and I wasn’t really resting.

I wasn’t enjoying my tour. I wasn’t enjoying the moment I was in. I was living in the future and what I wanted to do next. And I wasn’t appreciating the now that I had worked so hard for. So we put a lot of other things on mute, and on hold, and that’s where the process started. My hair started to fall out and my body was talking to me. You know, I don’t want to be an artist that’s just big at the moment. And it’s funny, sometimes people ask me if I think I’ve reached my peak, and I think a peak is up to you. You can reach a peak every day. It depends on how you’re feeling. It could be artistically or personally. And there’s some ways that I always try to carry with me. What did I do today to make me feel like I’ve reached a peak? So it was lucky that I could put some things on hold, and it’s only when I did that that the album began to come out.

I feel like what you’re talking about is so important. Many artists struggle with the expectations put on them, especially during a breakthrough where it feels like they need to take advantage of the moment.
It’s almost a paradox, you know? It is important, especially when you’re an artist who cares so much and you’re aware that you have great momentum and you want to keep it going. It’s easy to let other people’s thoughts and comments get to you. So it’s confusing and I really try to protect myself from things like that. I want to be here for a long time, but I also want to feel healthy. I want to be happy with who I am and I want to stay true to myself. And at the end of the day, staying true to myself was probably the main reason why people even started to connect with me and resonate with me. And so I never want to let that go.

Are there other artists or people that you talked to during this time who helped?
Yeah, definitely. Other than my friends, I do talk to other artists. Villano Antillano, I’ve called her on FaceTime randomly.  And she’s such a smart and intelligent woman and she’s so well-educated and she’s been through so much and she always kind of knows what to tell me. Kany Garcia, Elena Rose is also somebody I enjoy talking to as well. I’m lucky to have met artists that feel like friends.

What did you learn about putting the world on “do not disturb” mode?
The moment we started to feel more connected and relaxed, the songs started coming out one after the other. I just needed to be in a place where I could calm down and think through what I wanted to say. It was almost a retreat. I hold a lot of unspoken emotion and it’s really hard for me at times to just simply talk about what I’m feeling, whether it’s something happy or something not so happy. And sometimes I have to push myself to talk because then you feel like you’re going to blow up. You get a traffic jam in your head and then just nothing comes out, nothing gets through, and you feel clustered and cloudy. I say my brain feels like spaghetti. But once I was able to open up, the writing became easier. The moment you start to talk about something that’s true to you. It just bursts out because you’re not faking it.

You have Lil Jon on “Wassup.” How did you get him on the track?
My producer Mauro and I were just goofing around the studio, and he had this MIDI player, and he started playing “Lollipop.” Then we just started working based off that. When we were finishing up, he was the one with these intrusive thoughts and started imitating Lil Jon. He was going “It’s Mauro and Baby Miko!” And my manager was in the studio and she said, “Why don’t we get the actual Lil Jon?” And we were like, “We won’t lose anything by trying!” Within two days, he’d already sent some stems. And Mauro was texting me like, “I’m in a group chat with Lil Jon. What the fuck?” He was so fun to work with, and he even sent extra ad libs and things that we used in the song. Honestly, we have a bunch and we even talked about using outtakes in another song.

Were you a big fan of 2000s hip hop?
Yes, very much. I grew up with an older brother, and I had this older cousin who was my neighbor, and he was really into Biggie, Mobb Deep, Tupac, and Nas and these iconic hip hop artists. When I started listening to these artists I started to discover other artists like that. And at that time, the Black-Eyed Peas were popping back then, Gwen Stefani, Fergie had dropped her album. I discovered Missy Elliott, Timbaland, and Lauryn Hill. My parents used to love Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. When you listen to my music, you can tell that there’s a really big influence from that era.

One big theme on the album is also hotels. How did that side of the album come together?
As soon as we landed on the title Do Not Disturb, the first thing that came to my head were those hotel door signs you put on your door, and it just made all the sense in the world. I usually spend more time in hotels than I do in my own house, and we thought it would be such a cool visual aesthetic to give to the project. We played with elevator noise transitions and sounds. Mauro is big on sound design, and there’s a song where if you listen closely, you can hear somebody knocking on the door and saying, “Housekeeping!”  At the end of one song, you hear a shower. It just felt like hotels carry so much ear candy that I thought it would be such great material to play with. That also makes it a paradox because I’m claiming privacy in a space that’s likely not mine.

How has this album changed your creative process?
That’s a good question. On att., I had a very clear idea of things I wanted to talk about and the visual identity. This album was totally different. I let it build itself. It definitely did feel like I was writing in a new way. And I really take my time with my music. Maybe I’ll write an intro or a chorus today and I’ll be like, “Just leave it there, let it marinate, let me listen to it next week,” and then I’ll write the verse a week later. Sometimes, honest to God, there are  seven different versions of certain verses, different choruses, everything. And I didn’t stop until I was like, “Okay, this is the one. This is the one that’s giving me butterflies. “Sexo de Moteles” was one that had a bunch of different versions. I’ll walk out of the studio and be like “This is fire!” And then two days later, I’ll call Mauro and be like, “Yo, let’s change this verse.”

The only collaboration is with Eladio Carrion. How did that happen?
That one was like a puzzle. We got to go to the studio together, and we started building the back and forth. He’s so good at wordplay and freestyling, and anytime I asked him, “Could you record this little detail,” he’s like, “Bet!”

With this one, it was such an introspective project that I was just trying to capture where it was emotionally. I was just in my little world. I wasn’t really chasing features or collaborations and a lot you just like happens organically. Eladio just made sense on the album.

You’ve done other unexpected collaborations recently, like appearing on Katseye’s “Gabriela” remix.
 I enjoy collaborating a lot, but I don’t think about them that much. If I just enjoy the song or like I’m a fan of this artist, then I’m definitely  doing it. If somebody sends the song over, and I can’t get it out of my head, I’m in. For “Gabriela” as one example, I’m such a big fan of Katseye. They’re so cool and I already had the song stuck in my head so when the minute they invited me to hop on it, I was like, “Yes!”

You’re performing at El Choli in December. This was a big dream for you, even when you were a tattoo artist. How are you feeling about it?
I’m thinking about this 25/8. It’s all I think about right now. I’m just overwhelmed with joy. And my family, they’re so excited for me I can’t even begin to comprehend the fact that it’s already out there, that this is happening. The first night is sold out. It’s so surreal. So we’re just prepping and having fun while we’re remembering that this has been such a huge dream for such a long time and it’s amazing to put my name down with all those other artists who have performed at El Choli.

Do you still tattoo for fun?
No, but recently I’ve been thinking about it more than usual because I have my old tattoo gun at home. I was thinking about just tattooing my friends for fun. They would pass out, from excitement if I were to just randomly be like, “Hey you guys! Look what I got!”

What’s the secret to a good tattoo?
It depends on the person. I love every single tattoo I have. I don’t regret a single one. They make me feel like an anime character, you know?

Did you have a signature style as a tattoo artist?
I used to do a lot of Japanese and Greek mythology tattoos, and I was doing them in single-needle styles. It kind of looks like dots, everything black and gray. I didn’t really play around a lot with color, unless a client came up to me and was like, “I want this full color realism rose.” But I did play around with little color details. I had studied drawing in college, so that’s also why tattooing made sense. If I hadn’t made music I would have kept tattooing. I used to really look up to this tattoo artist; he would travel the world, and he would be like, “All right, these next six months, I’m going to be in Japan.” I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness. I want to do that.”

You made a cameo at El Choli, when Bad Bunny brought you out for his residency. He picked you as a Future of Music artist in 2023. What does that mean to you?
It is so special that I got to be part for a historic moment in such a historic place. Being able to be with one of the biggest artists Puerto Rico has ever had in such a special month dedicated only to us is fulfilling to the heart. And being up there with an artist I admire so much and an artist I can also talk to at times and he’s such a sweetheart. I remember reading some comments after my show, like some fans were saying, “Is she okay? She seemed a little off.” And I was just so emotional and trying to contain myself.  To be part of something so special, for the economy of Puerto Rico, the visibility of Puerto Rico, it means a lot. He’s definitely had an amazing year. That’s nothing new. He’s brilliant and he’s so attentive to his people and he’s so passionate about what he does.

You played GovBall during Pride month. What was that moment like, and what does it mean that your LGBTQ fans feel so seen by you?
When I’m onstage, it’s definitely one of those moments when everything is on mute. It’s what I work for, you know? It’s what I dreamt of. I feel it’s where I was born to be. And I’m just unapologetically myself and I have so much fun. Being able to see people come out to a space that feels safe for them and where they feel welcome and just seeing this huge smile from ear to ear and seeing them dancing with me, it fills my heart.

The world is in such a weird place right now, and there’s not a lot of safe spaces in the world right now. And being able to offer a little bubble for like an hour, it is truly a blessing. The world needs a little love now more than ever, and hope. And I’m happy that’s something I can at least offer fans when they come to see me.