First Look: young UK soul singer Rainy Milo
Singer Rainy Milo is that rare breed of talent that comes along about as often as a blue moon and captures the attention of the world with (almost literally) the very first note out of her mouth. After releasing her single "Bout You" at the behest of friends, Milo's sound began a healthy buzz that immediately lead to a bidding war before she left high school. Overwhelmed by the attention, Milo elected to retain her independence and retreated to the studio just long enough to record and release the Black & Blonde EP. She resurfaced as the head of her own label with the founding of the Limey imprint on EMI/Universal. That would be a rather impressive coup for any artist. The fact that Milo found herself in that position before the age of 18 is an amazing testament to the caliber of talent she possesses.
The emergence of the South London phenom has added another solid player to an already deep bench of vocal powerhouses and cool groups coming out of the UK lately. The most endearing and interesting thing about Milo is that her sound feels more representative of the youthful subculture of South London than the electro-experimentalism or soul revivalist sounds that many outside of the UK have come to expect from artists across the pond. Writing with a diarist's candor and a maturity that belies her age, Rainy Milo brings an aesthetic to the table that is utterly individual and decidedly fresh.
>>>Stream Debian Blak's "Bout You" Remix (via Okayfuture Premiere)
If she needed any further endorsement of her ability, world-renowned UK tastemaker and DJ Gilles Peterson featured Milo on the Brownswood Bubblers 8 compilation and hosted her live in session at the Brownswood Basement for a somewhat stripped down performance of "Bout U."
Rainy Milo is now set to release This Thing Of Ours - her first full-length debut LP completed with the help of Eldad Guetta and producer and frequent collaborator Daje - via Limey/EMI on March 3rd. With all of these amazing credits and an armful of brand new tracks under her belt, we felt it only right to get Rainy Milo's take on things ahead of the album release. Read what she had to say in her OKP interview and hear some more key tracks below:
OKP: Who is Rainy Milo? What you can tell us about yourself that we may not know yet?
RM: I'm an 18-year old singer songwriter from South East London and I feel as if though most of what there really is to know about me is in my music
OKP: Word is a bidding war broke out after you released the song “Bout You” online. Can you talk about that experience and how it affected you?
RM: Haha! It was funny in the sense of how little I knew about the record industry, I remember being sat in class and receiving lots of emails from people called 'A&Rs' who wanted to meet with me and I had no idea what an A&R even was, so I had to google it. I met a lot of people around that time and it was of course overwhelming but cool to see just how into “'Bout You” people were but I felt as though it was way too soon to be signing a record deal, and it also felt as if though they didn't quite understand what sort of artist I was, and just how in control I wanted to be in all aspects of my career. So I turned deals down and went away to record my mixtape Limey with my producer Daje without any major Label involvement, it was just us in the studio doing what we love to do best, make music.
OKP: You recently performed “Bout You” live in session at Brownswood for Gilles Peterson, who is not only a UK institution but an international musical force—what was the experience like?
RM: It was such a pleasure to be performing “'Bout You” with the band in that arrangement, too--let alone for Gilles who has been such a great early supporter of my music, which I'm so grateful for. I also got to hang and did an interview with him after, I was so happy to meet him and really hope one day I can actually sit down and talk about music with him for ages. I'd love that…
OKP: You’ve developed a bit of a following because of your .GIF videos. Do you have plans to expand upon that aesthetic with the official videos for your debut LP?
RM: I've had so much fun creating all of these videos and I'll always keep making them for as long as I enjoy creating them, but I doubt they'll find their way into the actually official videos, I enjoy them as a cool extra side project for the fans and my own entertainment too to be honest.
OKP: Your sound is heavily influenced by r&b and hip-hop, but you were raised on reggae. How much does that sound figure into what you’re doing?
RM: I feel really without trying all of the music that had been played around me growing up has of course influenced me musically and somehow always organically finds its own way into the songs I write, I think I just naturally take to tracks that producers send to me that have that jazzy, bluesy and reggae vibe in them because that’s what I heard and enjoyed listening to growing up.
OKP: What about South London? Is there anything about your sound that is very specific to where you’re from?
RM: I think of course South London has influenced me, I only write about what I know and South London up until recently was really all I knew. I believe having grown up here made me mature sooner than most because I just had to grow up fast being from here--and that of course has contributed to how mature I come across in the music.
