If one could personify German philosophy, Game Boy Color, and David Foster Wallace (but biracial)… what would the being become? A 20-year-old philosophy major at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin with a microphone in his hand and veggie bacon on his plate. Rory Ferreira, otherwise known as Milo, has enough big ideas to create a master’s thesis or more. Born in Chicago, raised in Maine and imported to Wisconsin after a childhood of moving around, Ferreira has quietly ambushed the hip-hop blogosphere with his brand of thought-provoking, pop-culture-immersed “nerd-hop.”
“Nerd-Hop was the name I gave myself when I thought no one was paying attention,” Ferreira said. “It was instinctive because my music pertains a lot to nerd culture, but unlike nerdcore it doesn’t create a caricature of a nerd. You can listen to my music even if you’re not nerdy at all, and I hope you can get something out of it.”
With the release of two mixtapes since November of 2011, I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here and Milo Takes Baths, the underground has been getting something out of Ferreira’s calculated and intellectual musings. He has received praise from popular hip-hop review blogs such as The Needle Drop and Dead End Hip Hop, and was recently featured on the Forbes website under its “Cheap Tunes” series. As the popularity of nerd culture has become increasingly more visible in mainstream hip-hop, Ferreira is happy yet critical of how genuine its current proprietors are.
“I’m happy with the rise of honest nerd culture,” Ferreira said. “but I feel like there is a certain pandering going on in a lot of music and a lot of people. The adoption of ‘nerdwear:’ you see these really hood rappers wearing thick black glasses that aren’t real or T.I. releasing a line of cardigans,” Ferreira said. “Stuff like that is kind of outlandish because it doesn’t feel genuine. It seems to come from this place of marketing.”
Ferreira gives off the same honest, organic chemistry that he seeks from the world through his humanized, poetic delivery and subject matter ranging from the utterly hilarious to the pensively intense. Instead of another generic 808 or boom-bap loop, his preference for electronic soundscapes and offbeat humility in the instrumentals he raps over is something he takes very seriously.
“It needs to express humanity through melody,” Ferreira said. “If I feel like an instrumental is adequately electronic that isn’t easily accessible, it needs to express certain humanity to it. It just has to hit me. If it just pulls out my heart, I feel it in me.”
He even carries this chemistry right down to his lifestyle as a straight-edge vegetarian who quit eating meat the day he graduated high school.
“I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t eat meat and I don’t cut my hair,” Ferreira said. “I try to limit the things I put in my body. I try to be as healthy as I can be with respect to being a normal kid. I’m not really interested in exercising a lot or becoming a health nut. I just want to have the feeling that I am a good person and that I put good things in my body.”
Many of Ferreira’s critics have stated that his music is inaccessible or simply too sad for their taste. Ferreira sees his songs as mere depictions of reality that are intended for the nerds and the lonely beings in the world like him. As inspired by a Kurt Vonnegut quote, Ferreira sees his current hobby as a mission in which “the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured” through engaging and interacting with these like-minded communities.
“Growing up as a black nerd in Maine, I was made fun of so often and I had no friends,” Ferreira said. “Now, I have general depression disorder, generalized anxiety... This music has helped me cope with that, and meeting these other nerdy people… If we can create communities at every show where we have a safety bubble around us, then everything is cool… where we can cure loneliness.”
Milo will be at The Frequency on Thursday, March 22 as part of the “South by South Central” tour with Louis Logic, Open Mike Eagle, Hyphon, and Radish Sallis. Doors open at 9 p.m., admission is $8.
