After an exciting past year, Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko is in homebody mode.
Home in Puerto Rico, Miko — whose real name is María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano — abides by a consistent schedule. Mornings are reserved for press and promotions, and afternoons for high-intensity interval training in preparation for touring. At the time of our conversation, she is sitting at home with her one-year-old dachshund Naila in her lap.
Though her second album, Do Not Disturb, dropped only two months ago, she may pop into the studio later that day.
“I’m always in the studio, to be honest,” Miko says, “whether it’s working on the next project or just for the love of it. We have a studio at our place, and sometimes it’s just like looking at me, and I’m like, ‘I need to go in there with no expectations or pressure.’ I love what I do, I love my job. Music is my passion, and that’s the vibe today.”
Hailing from a town called Añasco, Miko moves by the power of love and camaraderie. She grew up playing “every sport” with kids from the neighborhood — soccer, karate, tennis, ping-pong, and basketball. For the latter, she played on her school’s boys team, as there wasn’t a girls team.
But even as a star athlete, Miko always had music on her mind. Miko briefly attended the University Of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus, where she studied drawing and played for the university’s soccer team. However, budget cuts affected credit hours in her degree program, so Miko later transferred to the Interamerican University Of Puerto Rico in San Germán, where she studied visual arts. Even through her academic career, she felt that she wasn’t pushing the artistic buttons she wanted to push.
“College is when I started exploring the world [of music],” Miko says. “And as soon as I graduated from college, I was like, ‘Okay, I gave my parents my bachelor’s degree — which is the only thing they asked of me.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, guys, I’m gonna make music. This is what I want to do.’ And, well, the rest was history.”
Miko got her start by uploading freestyles to Soundcloud, over beats she found on YouTube. She funded her music by working as a tattoo artist to cover studio costs. In 2023, she earned a breakthrough hit in the form of “Wiggy,” a bouncy Spanish hip-hop track which samples “Aserejé” by Las Ketchup.
In Hispanic and Latine households, “Aserejé” was often said to be a satanic song, given the nonsensical chorus, which itself is a spin on “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang. But Miko only has joyful memories of this song. “People sometimes will literally talk whatever, but that was such a huge song in my house growing up. My mom specifically used to love it so much, and we would do the little dance at home anytime it was on.”
Since 2023, Miko has been on the road supporting some of the biggest names in music. She’s accompanied Karol G on the Mañana Será Bonito Tour, headlined her own XOXO Tour, and opened for Billie Eilish on the Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour. During that time, she released two albums — her debut ATT and Do Not Disturb.
As her star continues to rise, Miko has navigated fame with her loved ones by her side.
“I feel like I’ve done well with my mind and with my heart,” says Miko. “I’m still surrounded by the people I grew up with, which I feel has been a key piece to me being able to feel at ease and good with my heart, and where I stand and my morals. And having my parents around as well. They’re my No. 1 fans. I just feel blessed, to be honest, and I feel happy that people are enjoying what I do, and that they have felt connected to it. I’ve gotten to do so many amazing things, thanks to the music that we do. So I just hope this continues.”
As the title of Miko’s sophomore album suggests, Do Not Disturb was inspired by her time on the road. Many of the songs “were born in hotel rooms,” Miko says. Perhaps the best example of this is “En El Ritz,” a trap-fueled ode to one-night stands in luxury hotels. “Vamos a chingar en el Ritz,” she repeats on the song’s chorus.
Miko isn’t one to shy away from her flirtatious ways. The Lil Wayne-sampling “Wassup” captures scenes of herself flirting with women in clubs while partying in different cities. But she’s no hedonist. In fact, her heart is always open for love. “I’m definitely a softie lover girl,” Miko says. “I cannot hide it.”
Still, she insists that she keeps her heart and her soul on DND for the time being, prioritizing her craft and her creativity. A textbook Scorpio, Miko feels love with a sense of unwavering passion, but directs this toward her music.
“As soon as ATT came out, I already knew that I wanted to make this album,” says Miko. “And when we started the tour, I did my best to try to get some studio [time] in. It was really hard at first, because we were doing so many shows, and we were on the road. But a lot of concepts were born, even from me not having the name [of the album] yet, or even the slightest concept of how I wanted to aesthetically tie everything together. I always had my ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door. Some hotels have a little button, and I’d be putting it on. It’s funny how sometimes it was just under your nose the whole time.”
Miko takes a hybrid approach to her songwriting. Most of the time, she writes her bars down. She often enters a flow state while in the booth. When she’s in this state of mind, the top melodies and cadences come naturally to her. From there, she may mumble and hum placeholders for lyrics and bars, but the words soon follow.
Some of these words may have your abuelita praying a rosary. Miko hides nothing when it comes to sex. But despite her unfiltered approach, she maintains a degree of privacy in her personal life.
“I always go with the flow,” Miko says. “But I like to be selective with my words and what I share. I’ve always been a private person, but who doesn’t love sex, you know? It’s part of us. We’re human. It’s love at the end of the day, and it’s a form of expression. It’s art. I just wanted to talk about it.”
But as a Scorpio, Miko seeks balance. With her confident, raunchy bars comes the more romantic, spiritual side. She showcases such duality with her vocals and singing chops. On a standout track, “Ojalá,” Miko expresses hope for meeting a current love in an alternate timeline. “Maybe, maybe, maybe, en otra vida maybe, ojalá que nunca me olvides,” she sings, meaning “maybe, maybe, maybe, in another lifetime maybe, I hope you never forget me.”
From her childhood, spirituality has been a key component in everything Miko does.
“When I was growing up, I read this book called Many Lives, Many Masters by [Dr. Brian Weiss], and it changed my brain chemistry forever,” Miko recalls. “I had always wanted to have a song where I could talk about that. ‘Ojalá’ was a gorgeous process. It was very emotional for us, and it’s probably one of my favorite tracks on the album. That was a song where I didn’t write anything down, and everything was a flow state. That song just happened, and when we were finishing up, I kept repeating the word ‘maybe,’ and it kind of just happened. We were so happy about it.”
It could be months or years from now before we hear Miko’s next album. As she enters the studio, she takes inspiration from a rapidly evolving Latin music landscape. “I never know what to expect out of music, because it will be the most unexpected thing sometimes. Maybe suddenly, it’s like sexy drill, then it’s reggaeton again, then we’re trapping, then it’s like Jersey. Now we have these pop girls taking over the world, which is so fire to me. And I just think Latinos have every sort of flavor in them. I like to be taken by surprise.”
In the days to come, Miko is looking forward to seeing Latin artists dominate, especially as fellow Riqueño Bad Bunny is performing the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show in February. Miko herself also has a few festival performances lined up — including slots at Festival Estereo Picnic in Bogota, Colombia in March, and Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles, Iowa in July.
But when she’s not training or recording, Miko is loving spending time at home — where she has everything she needs.
“I’m in a very domestic era,” says Miko. “I’m enjoying my rent and spending time with my parents. And I like to draw. I draw a lot. Honestly, I have this whole corner in my house where it’s just a bunch of paper, notebooks, and markers. I always try to keep my creative side stimulated.”