Her first EP, Trap Kitty, arrived last July. Miko considers it a stripper chronicle, inspired by her best friend who’s a dancer. On it, Miko is a master of rizz, laying on her flirtatious charm and wisecracking banter in laugh-out-loud punchlines: On “Putero,” she boasts about fingering a lover’s pussy like it’s a cello.
Most of Puerto Rican rap and reggaeton’s male artists eat this shit up, given that objectifying sex talk is one of the genre’s most reliable motifs. But not everyone appreciates Miko’s candor. On an island where colonialism’s brutal legacy is alive and well, and where the chokehold of U.S. imperialism is stifling, Miko’s queerness was challenging for her religious family to swallow. “They took me to church; they took me to therapists; they took me out of school,” she says. Working with a therapist helped her parents realize their mistake, and they have since repaired their relationship.
At first, Miko harbored some fear around being an openly lesbian artist in the music business. “We live in a machista world, and urbano as a genre is composed of men,” she says. “But I have a group of people who back me and love me for who I am.” “Vendetta,” her track with Villano, helped Miko grasp the full weight of her influence; she believes it’s the first time an openly lesbian rapper and a trans woman from Puerto Rico have collaborated on a trap song. “You’d walk through the streets in Puerto Rico and it’d be playing in cars, in clubs. That’s how I realized we were making history.”
Alongside Miko and Villana, another renegade of the movement is RaiNao. Her songs resemble the fog on a pitch-dark dancefloor—frosted-glass vocals, blunted dembow riddims, and muted snare rolls gently cutting through the haze. “Mi Piscis,” from her debut EP ahora A.K.A. NAO, is the equivalent of an immersive dream you immediately forget after waking up.
Nao grew up in Santurce, one of San Juan’s beloved art districts. Her father was a backup vocalist for various salsa bands, including that of Pete “El Conde” Rodríguez, who is best known for the boogaloo hit “I Like It Like That.” Reggaeton was banned in the house during her childhood, but she still managed to discover legends like La Sista, Ivy Queen, and Tego Calderón, and even learned about rock through Guitar Hero. In the sixth grade, she took up the saxophone, thanks to her love of noted jazz icon Lisa Simpson.
Nao attended the prestigious music school Escuela Libre de Música before going to college at the University of Puerto Rico. There, she studied biology for two years, at first hoping to pursue a career as a surgeon, but eventually switched to theater. During college, Nao worked as a backup vocalist for the Puerto Rican rapper and reggaetonero Rafa Pabón, an alumnus of the same music school, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that she decided to focus on a solo venture. “I was working at an insurance agency, which gave me a lot of financial stability, but my head was going to explode,” she says. “I could no longer not make art.”
