While I’ve only been in Wisconsin a short while, I’ve enjoyed discovering some of the great hip hop hidden up here. The most recent artist to catch my attention is a talented emcee by the name of Milo. The youngster has recently dropped his debut, I wish my brother Rob was here.

On the opening track, “Omar Don’t Scare,” we get introduced to a nerdy wordsmith with an awkward sense of humor. It’s a fun track filled with lines distancing himself from mainstream rap, making it clear that he’s not any sort of thug or blinged out rapper, while dropping references to Herzog and describing himself as “crusty old grandpa rap.” While there is substance to the song, it created the slightest worry upon my first listen that this might come across as a novelty with all the jokes being dropped, but the song ends with a reference to Radio Raheem and a clip of Samuel L. Jackson from Do The Right Thing that shows the album’s hand and makes you realize that there’s more to Milo than what’s on the surface. “Just Us (For my friend Robert, Who doesn’t live here anymore),” the second track, is a slower song in which Milo examines his relationship with his brother who has passed. It’s at this moment that it should be obvious that the title of this album is not just some clever play on a Del album title, but a way to use music to deal with deep pain and loss. It’s an incredibly moving song, and I’m glad he opened up to share with us. Two songs in and we’ve seen several sides to Milo as an artist. Yes, there is an awkward young man that uses nerdy humor and a large vocabulary and samples contemporary music like Gold Panda to distract listeners from seeing his vulnerable side. If you listen closely, though, you’ll hear a guy bearing himself to his listeners while searching for identity and trying to find direction, like most of do when we’re in our late teens and early twenties.

While all this is happening, Milo is also taking on preconceptions that listeners might have when it comes to hip hop. On “Budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies,” he declares, “I refuse to learn gimmicky dance moves, but surely this is something you can shake your ass to,” as he makes the case for more diversity of musical styles within hip hop. This is followed by “Super Happy Sunshine Fun Club” with Safari Al which does a great job of taking hip hop’s homophobia to task with a chorus that has them announcing “We’re two very heterosexual rap pals, our constant insistence on how good the other is makes me wonder if we believe anything we’re saying, or if this is our attempt to avoid hip hop’s gay hazing.” It’s refreshing to hear someone take this subject on, since homophobia in hip hop comes up much more than most people like to admit, and a great deal of people don’t confront it when it happens. In recanting a personal experience where I confronted an artist about this recently, a friend told me “it’s a sad fact of hip hop culture that you can’t throw a stone at a group of emcees without hitting a homophobe.” Thus, I’m always happy to come across artists who are willing to say “Shame on rappers who perpetuate negative stereotypes and homophobia and things like that. Y’all some damn fools. Omar Little is probably going to devour you.”

I wish my brother Rob was here is one of my favorite debuts of the year. Milo might be young and still figuring things out, but he covers a lot of ground here. With a delivery that is half-spoken and sarcastic, but gives way to honest emotion, we get to know him very well over the course of the record. From challenging hip hop culture to discussing personal relationships and embracing his awkward nerdiness, Milo has given us an album that you’re going to want to spend some time with.