The Young Miko Effect

I hope you don’t mind,” says Young Miko, who’s halfway to being butt-ass naked in a New York photo studio. “I change absolutely anywhere.” She deposits a Miu Miu polo into the arms of a nearby stylist, revealing a delicate cherry blossom tattoo that winds all the way down from her clavicles, under her sports bra, along Olympian abs, and into her waistband.

A lack of inhibitions has colored Miko’s rise since the release of 2022’s “Riri,” a viral hit that flipped the beat of Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How To Dougie” into a feathery seduction of a baddie “bebecita.” Since then, the Puerto Rican rapper-singer has become an urbano phenom with a core fan base of largely young, queer women and femmes drawn to the rapper’s brazen and dexterous trap-pop en español. She’s hit nine-digit views on multiple music videos, netted her first Grammy nomination last year, and collaborated with not only Latin superstars like J Balvin, Karol G, and Feid, but also the global girl group KATSEYE, K-pop idols Stray Kids, and London drill golden boy Central Cee. When Bad Bunny performed his No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí residency at Puerto Rico’s famed José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum this summer, Young Miko was one of his special guests. This month, she returned to the venue to headline two shows of her own.

On the October day we meet, though, Miko is experiencing one of her biggest pinch-me moments in a year full of them. For the past week, she’s been opening up for Billie Eilish on the Hit Me Hard and Soft arena tour. “I’m so grateful,” says Miko, who has changed into baggy jeans and a crisp tee and is now settled on a couch. Her friendship with the singer “means the world. I feel blessed to meet people like her that are so genuine and easy to talk to, especially in such a loud industry. It’s a place filled with fake people with bad intentions. She’s very refreshing.”

The mainland American audiences at Eilish’s shows feel the same way about Miko. Connecting to new fans with her Spanish-language music “hasn’t felt like a barrier at all,” the 28-year-old says. Indeed, it appears that Miko’s performances have entirely rearranged the brain chemistry of some attendees. One recent compilation of reactions to the “Young Miko movement” shows a young Eilish fan so taken by the artist’s on-stage charisma — enhanced by long-stroke hip thrusts — that she looks ready to risk it all and book the next flight to San Juan.

“At these shows with Billie, girls have their eyes light up when they see I’m singing to other girls. It gets me emotional.”

Miko knows it’s her moment, and she’s attacking it like a college athlete on their first season with the pros. Her new album, Do Not Disturb, is the sound of her world opening up, playing with Darkchild-era hip-pop (“Esa Nena”), arrhythmia-inducing drum and bass (“Ojala”), baby-making slow jams (“Sin Pausa”), as well as a sleekened version of her signature reggaeton and trap. The hypnotic “Likey Likey” clearly targets the dead center of the U.S. mainstream, with a marching bass, an addictive hook, and a co-write from the flop-allergic Amy Allen (whose credits include Sabrina Carpenter’s recent string of smashes). The two met at Variety’s Hitmakers awards in 2024, where Miko was honored as Trailblazer of the Year, and later linked up at the studio. “I don’t write in English, and she doesn’t speak Spanish,” recalls Miko. “I don’t even know how it happened, but I started mumbling top melodies, and she was mumbling other things, and we accidentally wrote a whole song.”

In person, Miko is sweetly modest, quick to laugh, and polite to a fault. When we initially sit down on mismatched chairs with an odd height difference, she steers us to a cozy sofa and encourages me to take my shoes off to be more comfortable. But to misquote Lil Jon, she’s a lady in the streets, freak in the booth. Her songs are littered with outlandish wordplay, putting delightfully pervy twists on pop culture references that, thanks to the relish in her delivery, sound rude even if you don’t speak her language. “Feed me like a Tamagotchi,” she purred on her 2024 album, att., in a song that has something far more explicit on its mind than an evening meal.

Since she began releasing music in 2021, Miko’s musical “mano derecha” — her right hand — has been the San Juan-based producer Mauro. “We challenge each other in the studio to see who can write the funniest bar,” Miko says. “There’s not a single filler word in there.” Sometimes, fans respond in ways that not even Miko could have seen coming. After the release of “Likey Likey,” which compares cunnilingus to munching on a Twix, she was thrilled to see fans posting pictures of themselves dressed up as the candy bar.

These days, everyone wants a piece of Young Miko. On a remix of KATSEYE’s “Gabriela,” Miko flips the song’s hands-off-my-man message, enticing the titular antagonist to “head down to Carolina so you can try a Latina.” “We were so honored when she agreed to jump on the remix,” says the group’s Sophia Laforteza. “She brought this fearless energy and confidence that gave the song a whole new life.” Meanwhile on “FINA,” a sex-positive (and notably trans-inclusive) Bad Bunny collaboration from his 2023 album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Miko lets her freakiest flag fly in a verse that comes close to out-raunching Puerto Rico’s king of smut. “I’m going inside, flow Curbelo,” she raps in Spanish, referencing the Vega Baja-born basketball star — then launches into a torrent of deliriously flagrant metaphors that climaxes with Miko likening her sweet taste to a snack from the Puerto Rican bakery chain Ricomini.

“I don’t make up concepts for anyone to jump on. I don’t need anyone. I needed Young Miko for that song,” Bad Bunny said while promoting the release. “I was a fan before, but when I work with artists and see what their system is, I gain respect for them. And I saw her work, saw her put it together, create the flow, and she killed it.”

“The U.S. is filled with so many Latin people, and we all share the same love of music and sports. When people see Bad Bunny’s joy out there, they’ll get it.”

Miko, born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano Cardona, grew up in Añasco, a relaxed town so close to the beach that Miko and her classmates would usually wear their bathing suits under their Catholic school uniforms in anticipation of an after-class dip. While she adored the music of Lauryn Hill, Ivy Queen, and the Boricua pop diva Kany García, Miko’s first passion was soccer, and she even played on a Puerto Rico national team. In 2019, she left the sport behind to concentrate on music, working a side gig as a tattoo artist to pay for studio time. In previous interviews, Miko has said that her religious family initially struggled with her queerness, taking her to church and therapy after she came out; they’ve since unlearned their prejudice and accepted Miko as she is. Today, she puts a more positive spin on the experience, telling me that those close to her “always made me feel like it was OK to be who I am,” supporting her to “come in guns blazing” from the jump.

Last year, Miko seemed on top of the world, with her first U.S. late-night bookings, a debut Coachella appearance where she performed with a rainbow-colored mic, and a 19-date U.S. tour. It was a hectic year of airplanes and hotel rooms, and her “mental health wasn’t the best,” she says. “I started to feel a little unrecognizable to myself.” She set herself the challenge of opening up and being vulnerable on Do Not Disturb. On “Algo Casual,” she re-immerses herself in an experience of heartbreak, longing to turn the clock back to a more carefree period in the relationship. “You can really hear my voice falling apart in some places,” she says. “We decided to leave it that way, because it was such a raw and special moment.”

While Miko wrote Do Not Disturb all over the world, she says recording it in her home territory made it feel especially intimate. “It’s everything to me,” she says of Puerto Rico. She couldn’t be more proud of Bad Bunny’s upcoming Super Bowl halftime show and rolls her eyes when I mention the small-minded backlash to his booking. “It’s dumb,” she says. “If they don’t want to listen to Spanish artists, then don’t. The U.S. is filled with so many Latin people, and we all share the same love of music and sports. At the end of the day, when people see his joy out there, they’ll get it.”

Though she says she’d never truly relocate to the continental U.S., Miko admits to “fantasizing” about a New York crashpad of her own. She can be relatively unbothered here, unlike the mob scenes that tend to greet her when she goes out at home. She’s more of a homebody than anything else, and would rather spend downtime cuddling with her dachshund puppy, Naila, or shooting pool in an out-of-the-way dive bar than partying in a glitzy club. At times, she’ll make an exception and hit up one of the LGBTQ+ ballroom nights in San Juan in what she laughingly calls her “ninja” disguise. “You’re not seeing anything here,” she says, gesturing to her face. “My hoodie is pulled down super low, and I’ll just be in a corner, looking a little creepy and enjoying the show.”

You get the sense it’s one of the few times that Miko truly curbs herself. From her earliest releases, she’s made sure that queerness is at the center of her music — one 2022 video even placed her most direct lyrics on-screen, in the style of Disney Sing-Along Songs. Not that Miko, born in 1997, lived through the VHS era when those karaoke-style tapes were popular, or when the stars from it had to treat their sexuality with discretion. So while she’ll nod to the richness of LGBTQ+ history on songs like 2024’s “Madre,” a ballroom-inspired collaboration with the Puerto Rican trans rapper Villano Antillano, Miko’s rise feels refreshingly unburdened by the pressures non-straight artists endured before her. At a time when sapphic stars like Boygenius and Chappell Roan easily win accolades and huge crowds, Miko recognizes that queerness isn’t an asterisk against her rise but completely integral to fueling it.

Even those watching from behind arena barricades can sense her confidence. “I’ve seen the power that holds,” Miko says. “I’ve seen what it’s done with me and my fans, and the relationship with people who don’t know me. At these shows with Billie, girls have their eyes light up when they see I’m singing to other girls. It gets me emotional.” I ask why, and she takes a beat before responding quietly, as if she’s speaking from a place a little deeper than her usual bravado. “It makes me feel that I have a purpose in life.”

“All visibility is important,” she adds, newly decisive. “Any time I get the opportunity to be unapologetic, I’m not thinking twice about it.”

Top image credit: Coach top, Willy Chavarria pants, Talent’s own jewelry