Latin

Young Miko is sitting, legs criss-crossed, atop her purple bed, surrounded by bookshelves, a boombox and a big Tamagotchi. A microphone clutched to her chest, she’s visibly emotional, almost teary-eyed.
But she’s not alone in what appears to be her bedroom. On this September evening, she’s onstage at Miami’s Hard Rock Live, and a crowd of 7,000 is chanting the 26-year-old urbano star’s name — even though she hasn’t yet said a word. The bed, the centerpiece of her set, is a reference to the cover art for her latest album, this year’s att. And the satisfaction on her face is a reaction to an anything but private moment. She’s gazing in awe at the crowd of mainly Gen Z girls whose effortlessly chic looks mirror her own Y2K aesthetic — oversize T-shirts, baggy pants, ultra-pink girly ensembles with shimmery makeup and pigtails. Young Miko — clad in a sparkly baby blue checkered two-piece and pristine white sneakers, her hair in her signature slicked-back half ponytail — soaks it all in.

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Onstage, Young Miko is graceful and charming, or “very demure, very mindful, very cutesy,” as she jokes in English with her zealous fans, who roar as she flashes them shy, flirtatious smiles. Tonight, she runs through her early hits, like the trap anthem “Lisa,” as well as newer ones, like att.’s “Rookie of the Year,” a song that perfectly captures Young Miko’s rapid rise to fame. She even brings out Colombian star Feid, one of her earliest supporters, to join her for two songs, including their first collaboration, “Classy 101,” with which she made her Billboard Hot 100 debut last year. “Thank you for the love you guys have given me,” she tells the audience at one point, speaking in a mix of English and Spanish. “Today, I’m very emotional and I don’t have the words to describe just how much your support means to me.”

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It’s the final show of Miko’s 24-date XOXO U.S. tour, her biggest trek yet, swiftly following her 2023 Trap Kitty world tour. Last year, “we played 40 minutes,” Miko explains backstage hours before her performance. “Now I’m onstage for two hours. Our crew was like 10 people; now it’s more than 50 of us,” she adds, her eyes growing wider. “Everything has multiplied.” Her mixture of excitement and incredulity is understandable. The gifted singer-rapper born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano in the northwestern Puerto Rican town of Añasco has had a meteoric rise, becoming one of the most promising global artists of her generation on the strength of her attitude-heavy trap songs and refreshing songwriting, which draws inspiration from her queer identity.

In the past year, Miko, who uploaded her first songs to SoundCloud in 2019 and signed with Puerto Rican indie label The Wave Music Group two years later, opened for Karol G’s stadium tour; collaborated with Bad Bunny on his track “Fina”; made her Coachella debut; and delivered her genre-bending debut album, att., which became her first Billboard 200 entry (short for atentamente, the title translates to “sincerely”). To date, she has had six entries on the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, and 319.9 million on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate.

“I take everything one day at a time,” says Miko, who was a tattoo artist before she committed to music full time. “Opening for Karol in stadiums, that helped me loosen up. Seeing her up close and personal and how she connected with her fans, that was huge. It helped me grow onstage, as a person and as an artist. It’s been a process, and I’ve learned to embrace every stage of my career.”

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Supporting Karol G’s tour was a “turning point” for Miko, says Hans Schafer, senior vp of global touring at Live Nation, which produced both Karol’s and Miko’s recent tours. “It solidified her presence in the Latin market and expanded her reach globally. Miko can potentially be one of her generation’s defining artists. She’s already proven she can headline [a] tour, and her ability to evolve musically while staying true to her roots is a critical factor in long-term success in the touring space.”

Miko’s achievements on the touring front and beyond reflect the slow but steady diversification of Latin music — and more specifically urbano music, which has been ruled by male artists for the past 20 years — and have made her rise feel even more momentous. The significance isn’t lost on her.

“Our generation is much more receptive and inclusive — what a time to be alive,” Miko says. “People just don’t give a f–k anymore; they care that you’re a good person. I remember how refreshing it was to hear Ivy Queen doing reggaetón and now you can name so many women in the genre; the change is here and you can’t deny it. It doesn’t mean we can now just lay back either. I’m excited to be part of a movement and a moment in history when people look back and say, ‘I remember Karol and Young Miko, and this one, and the other one.’ ”

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That turning tide inspired Young Miko and her team, which includes her manager (and best friend), Mariana López Crespo, and her longtime producer, Mauro (who is also López Crespo’s brother), to launch 1K, a company they describe as a creative collective comprising 20 individuals who are all also part of Miko’s team. “I don’t want to eat alone at the table,” Miko explains. “We’re very passionate about growing 1K into an empire — think Death Row Records — by signing and investing in new artists and content creators. We’re all in it to learn, grow and help others.”

She and López Crespo, who is also a queer woman, first met when they were teen soccer players. Together, they learned a valuable lesson. “The goalkeeper can’t save the game, the midfielder supports the defender, the defender is nothing without the forward, the midfield is nothing without the bench, and the bench is nothing without the coach,” Miko says. “We apply that mentality to everything we do today.”

López Crespo and Young Miko first met in 2012, when they were both trying out for the Puerto Rican women’s national soccer team. They both made the team — and instantly became best friends. Besides sharing a love for fútbol, the teenagers discovered they had the same taste in music, from Puerto Rican reggae band Cultura Profética to Lauryn Hill to Gwen Stefani. “She was the one on the team who was always blasting music on the speakers — she knew all the verses, she was charismatic, you could tell she really enjoyed performing,” López Crespo recalls of Miko.

After four years of playing together on the national football team (Miko as midfielder and López Crespo as forward), the two went their separate ways. Both were attending the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus, but then Miko transferred to Inter American University and López Crespo moved to Costa Rica to play soccer, though she eventually returned to Puerto Rico after an injury. Around 2018, she reconnected with Young Miko — or Vicky, as López Crespo still calls her — who showed her some of the music she had recorded using her iPhone and the built-in microphone on her Apple headphones. “I told her that she had to take this seriously because there was something there — her songs had personality,” López Crespo recalls. “I said, ‘Maybe you don’t have the resources now, but you have the discipline. Don’t stop.’ ” Miko’s response? “I’ll pursue this only if you are my manager.” “Fine,” López Crespo remembers thinking. “I’ve never done this, but I like a challenge, so vamos pa’ encima [let’s do it].”

Entire Studios top, Tiffany & Co. necklace and bracelet.

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Trained to be on an attack’s front line as a forward, López Crespo hit the ground running and started assembling a team that would help develop the plan for Young Miko’s career. One of the first people she approached was her brother Mauro, a trained musician who was also just starting his career as a producer.

“My sister told me that Vicky was making music and showed me two songs she had on SoundCloud,” Mauro remembers. “I immediately told Mariana, ‘There’s something here — she has the look, the swag, the voice, the bars. It’s raw, but it’s all there.’ ” A saxophonist who graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras with a bachelor’s degree in music, Mauro had taught himself to produce after being mesmerized when he saw one of his peers create a beat on a laptop. With the help of YouTube videos and patient producer friends, by 2020, he had posted some of his beats to Instagram.

“Things are always meant to be, they’re already written in our destiny,” Miko says. “When I was starting in music, Mauro was also starting to produce, so we grew together. I would give him that space to explore with me and he would give me space to explore as a songwriter, a singer. He forces me to open up, and I do the same with him. It’s been that way from the beginning.” She adds, categorically: “There would be no Young Miko without Mauro.”

Just as Miko and her team were getting going, the pandemic hit — but they used the COVID-19 shutdown to their advantage. López Crespo and Miko rented a mountaintop Airbnb in Rincón to host their inaugural songwriting camp. It was the first time that Miko’s “core” team, including producers and creatives, “locked ourselves in,” López Crespo says. “Not for the purpose of needing to get something out there, but rather to explore, get to know each other and build trust. I remember saying we’d give this process two years, and if we didn’t see anything happening, we’d reconsider. But it was clear that there was a special feeling in that camp. There was uncertainty, yes, but a lot of desire to grow.”

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Although the songs created during the camp were never officially released, Miko’s older material on SoundCloud still managed to catch Angelo Torres’ attention. The executive came across Miko’s SoundCloud link while scrolling through X. “I was instantly captivated when I heard her tracks,” he told Billboard when Miko was named Latin Rookie of the Year in 2023. “There was something undeniably intriguing about her sound. [I thought], ‘I really need to meet this person.’ ” He not only met her but signed her to The Wave Music Group in 2021, which he had recently launched alongside producer Caleb Calloway, who has since co-­produced some of Miko’s biggest hits. Last year, Capitol Music Group locked in a long-term distribution deal with the label.

Torres was also one of the first people with whom López Crespo talked business. “He’s someone I’m grateful for because it’s people like him that really encourage you and want you to grow,” she says. “They may be veterans and you are the new one, but they see that hunger in you.”

Young Miko’s eyes light up when she talks about having her closest friends as part of her team, knowing she’s surrounded by people who believed in her from day one — especially the person she has won championships with on — and now off, in a sense — the field. “Mariana has been my sister for as long as I can remember and I’m so proud of her. We’ve always been a dynamic duo. It gives me great pride to know that when we are no longer here, they will mention a name as great as Mariana López Crespo and I will be next to that name. Damn, I got so gay today, bro,” she says as she walks over to hug López Crespo, who is crouched in a corner of the Hard Rock Live green room, hands covering her face. “Don’t cry, it’s what I feel. And I don’t tell you often, but sometimes we need to stop and smell the roses.”

As Young Miko sees it, the foundation of her life hasn’t really changed even as she has catapulted to stardom. “It doesn’t have to,” she says before inadvertently evoking an anthem by one of her favorite ’90s acts: “I’m just a girl,” she adds with a sweet smile.

She still lives in Puerto Rico and hangs out with the same group of friends she did before she became a global star. “I feel like we hustle just how we used to hustle back then,” she adds. “We enjoy the feeling of being an underdog. Having bets against you and responding with ‘No, we’ve got this’? Best feeling.”

It’s her parents’ lives that she says she has changed. “I take my parents everywhere with me. They are my biggest fans. They are just super grateful and excited. The other day they told me, ‘We feel like we just started living and we’re 60-something,’ ” she says, pausing and taking a deep breath. “I get emotional.”

Young Miko photographed August 29, 2024 at Seret Studios in Brooklyn.

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And while she’s no longer on the soccer pitch, she has a new squad cheering her on. “I think [Bad Bunny] and Karol saw something of themselves in me. It came from their hearts to want to support or contribute to my career. It also gives me a lot of motivation because they are artists that I admire and are examples I want to follow. When I have people like them telling me, ‘You can 100% do this,’ then I have to,” she says. “Karol would take me to her sound check, show me things she did to warm up; she didn’t have to do any of that stuff.”

Earlier this year, Karol released the music video for “Contigo,” in which Young Miko plays her romantic interest. Especially for an urban artist, it felt like a big statement in support of the LGBTQ+ community — though Miko says the genre is more accepting of queer artists today than it has ever been. “I used to do things that were so innocent to a certain extent that I didn’t even realize I was causing a shift in the pendulum,” she explains. “Now looking back, I understand how shocking these things can be. I’m already thinking of new ways to grow a bigger space for everyone and keep changing things.”

To that end, Miko is also working to get people registered to vote ahead of the U.S. November election. A few weeks ago, she encouraged her Instagram followers — all 7 million of them — to make sure they’re registered, adding that she’ll be voting early because she won’t physically be in Puerto Rico on Nov. 5. “It’s something I’m very passionate about — my whole team is,” she says of joining the significant number of Latin and non-­Latin acts alike who’ve used their platforms to engage their fans in civic action. (She hasn’t yet supported a specific candidate.) “It is very important for the future of my island, the future of my people. I was very excited when I saw [Bad Bunny] posting; I saw myself in him as a person who lives in Puerto Rico. I think it is important to bring at least a little bit of awareness — like, ‘Hey, educate yourself on what you believe is right for you and your country.’ ”

It all feels intrinsically connected to another topic that makes Miko perk up: her vision for her future, which feels limitless. “It can look scary, but I know I’m capable of doing everything I set my mind to. I tell Mariana that I want to be in movies, that I want us to grow together as businesswomen — whether opportunities come to us or we go out and get them ourselves,” she says with determination. “I want to look back and be able to say that I did everything I wanted and squeezed everything I could out of this life.”

This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.