“I had never experienced something like it,” Young Miko tells Apple Music about the popularity of “Riri,” her viral breakthrough single. “I’m still processing what’s going on.” Far from an overnight success, the Puerto Rican rising star spent years experimenting with music—her self-described “platonic love”—on SoundCloud before linking with producers like Caleb Calloway and Mauro in 2020. Both of them feature prominently on TRAP KITTY, her EP-length debut that reveals more about the artist and her musical vision, one not confined to any particular style. “A trap kitty is just a girl that does for herself,” she says. “It’s 100 percent a representation of how I see myself and how I want women to feel when they hear my music.”
The nine-track effort, inclusive of two interludes, also allows Young Miko to flex her bilingual skills as a lyricist, a Spanglish talent that comes somewhat natural to her as per her upbringing and education. (“I rap how I talk,” she says.) Despite its concise length, she insists that the project’s contents and structure tell a story that reveals itself with repeat listens. “It’s a ride we want to take you on.” Read more about the songs on TRAP KITTY, in Young Miko’s own words, below.
“Standard”
“I watch a lot of anime and there's this show called Black Lagoon. The girl, she’s called Revy—I’ve always thought she was the baddest bitch out there. I want to be just like Revy and so I wrote this song, thinking about and describing Revy. I put it into what Revy would be like if she was a Puerto Rican girl. We wrote the song so fast because the vibe was amazing and Gabo Lugo and Maros, my main producer, made that beat really fast. It’s so dark and grungy. As soon as I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I wanted that to open TRAP KITTY because I think that’s one of the most empowering ones in the project and really gives you a taste of what I’m going to talk about throughout.”
“Stripper Diaries (Skit)”
“Those kids, they have a really fun story. Those are actual strippers having an actual conversation in their dressing room. They feel so natural, and they also set the tone for this ride we want to take you on. When you listen to the record in order, everything connects. If you really pay attention, there’s a lot of Easter eggs on the project. You can hear the dancer get out of her car and walk into the studio, and this car that passes behind her has [closing track] ‘Putero’ on. It’s really muffled. So, I think that people will catch it once they finish with it, and they’ll be like, ‘You know what? Let me listen to it again.’”
“Bi” (feat. Brray)
“We threw down the chorus first and then the verse. But then, listening to it over and over again, I was intimidated by the chorus. It was so fire that I was like, ‘No, the verse has to be even better.’ I think I wrote almost 15 different verses. The track came off fire, and I had no intent of putting Brray there, but I only had one verse, so I sent it to Caleb so he could hear the reference. About a week later, he sends me an audio. And then, when the second verse is about to come in, I’m like, ‘No, this can’t be happening.’ So, I didn’t really get to be in the studio with Brray, but I wrote him right after. That’s one of the best tracks in there. I can’t even imagine anybody else but him in there.”
“Trending”
“What I like about drill as a rapper is it gives me hip-hop vibes in a way that it’s just a lot of bars. It’s like glove-to-the-face from the moment it starts to the moment it ends. And that’s why we put it right next to ‘Bi,’ since ‘Bi’ has this little color of drill—we didn’t want to take people by surprise. We wanted to take you all the way to ‘Trending.’ I’m a huge fan of drill—but UK drill. I feel like Latin drill and UK drill are so different. UK drill just feels clean and elegant. And that’s exactly what ‘Trending’ feels like to me. I just had a situation happen a few days earlier, so I had a lot to talk about.”
“Smoke Break Interlude”
“I grew up listening to a lot of ’90s music, and interludes were really big back then. Even before you were going to listen to an album, it was like, ‘Yo, this is Missy Elliott, and you’re about to listen to…’ They really used to narrate what they used to do. So, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Riri”
“I feel like when you get right to the middle of a project, it’s when you really have to put out and really show out. It felt like such a fresh breath of air because most of the project feels pretty dark. We just wanted something really happy and bouncy and enjoyable in there. The day we made ‘Riri,’ the vibe in the studio was just insane. Everybody was losing their shit in the studio. So, that was another great day. And then ‘Riri’ also sets the tone for what’s about to come next as well. I describe myself as a rainbow. There’s every color in me, and I don’t want to be just one color. My mind can’t work that way.”
“Acento”
“I was in Mexico with Alvarito [Álvaro Díaz], and he had a show on the Felicilandia tour. We were backstage, and I had this really puffy, really colorful jacket. And this girl comes up to me and she says, ‘Oh, I love your jacket.’ I don’t quite remember what I said to her, but she was like, ‘I love your accent.’ And right there, she was like a whole concept. I think I even took out my phone right there. She was talking to me like, ‘I’m sorry, I have to write this down right now.’ That beat was made by Avila. He’s a great producer. Avila, on a random day, will send me 10 beats, 15 beats. I had ‘Acento’ completely written down. It didn’t have a certain style I wanted to do or anything, and the moment I heard that one, I knew like, ‘This is exactly where “Acento” has to go.’”
“Pull Up”
“It’s just a vibe. I wanted to leave just one verse, especially after ‘Acento,’ which is dark and a little slow-tempo. I wanted ‘Acento’ to be short and sweet and prepare you for what you’re about to listen to as well. In ‘Pull Up,’ I was just talking about the black Porsche, which is one of my favorite cars, and the black Supreme Air Forces, which is one of my favorite shoes. So, I was always saying, ‘I want to drive a black Porsche with my black Forces.’ And this is just what I talked about there. I feel it’s pretty fun.”
“Putero”
“I was with Mauro, and Caleb came in an hour late in the session. He was really mad. He was like, ‘Everybody’s making the same music. Nobody dares to do something different. I’m going to make something amazing.’ And then he sat down at his computer, just mad-typing. He really made that in, like, 10 minutes. He closes his laptop and he’s like, ‘I sent you something,’ and then he just left the studio. It was epic, actually. Mauro says, ‘This feels like strip-club music,’ and we just kept it going from there. I think I wrote about 10 or 15 verses until the last one. We added the sample of the guy at the beginning. He’s giving the intro to the stripper because people needed to feel like they’re in the strip club with us. We really wanted to end the project right there in your face. It makes you want to play it again.”