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Photos by Vika Brennick 

Even if you aren’t a frequent listener of Latin music, chances are you’ve heard of Young Miko. Although she'd already spent years building a loyal fanbase, 2026 has catapulted her into the mainstream. Following the release of her latest album, DND, Miko has continued to reach new heights—becoming the first Latina to front a GAP campaign and landing digital covers with Cosmopolitan and Rolling Stone Korea. It's clear she's no longer just one of Latin music's fastest-rising stars; she's becoming a global force. At just twenty-eight years old, the Puerto Rican rapper has already lived a slew of lives and career paths. Before music, she was a professional soccer player, then a tattoo artist. While it seems like music is where Miko is destined to be, she admitted to us that she misses these other paths and the fun they brought into her life.

On stage and online, Young Miko is electric, powerful, and commands a room. Behind the scenes, and in a small trailer at Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles, Iowa Young Miko is gentle, articulate, and refined. The difference in her personas is comforting and alludes to the idea that musicians are truly just like us - even if they received a “kajillion” views from a single clothing ad. Young Miko is more than just a character in the current rise of popularity in Spanish-speaking music. She is a dominant force in queer spaces, a powerhouse female rapper, and an artist who continues to push boundaries. Beyond the music, Miko has built a reputation for being effortlessly cool, refreshingly authentic, and deeply committed to creating a space where fans feel seen. She has a sincerity that makes her impossible not to root for. And if her career so far is any indication, she's only getting started.

OnesToWatch: Can you introduce yourself?

Young Miko: Yeah! I'm from Puerto Rico. It's my first time at Hinterland. We've been making music for about six years now and I'm excited to be here with you guys. Thank you for having me!

Hinterland is obviously just one stop of a larger Late Checkout tour and festival run you're doing. Are there any places you're looking forward to going to? 

I'm honestly just excited for the whole tour. It's been a minute since we've been on tour and we just got done with this first month. I'm just looking forward to keeping the tour going because in Mexico and in the US we're doing arenas, so it's a different version of the show. It's a bigger version of the show, which just has me excited overall. I just want to start.

A lot of your fan base is towards this end of the world. Obviously you have plenty of fans in Europe, but I think it's gonna be super cool to see your day ones.

No, you're right. It's been very fun because the first leg of the tour was very small theaters. It was the first time I was in these places, so I just wanted to say hi first and get people to know me first. Now in arenas, we show you production and a bigger show. 

You released the deluxe not too long ago. Six new tracks. Do you have a favorite? 

It depends on what mood I'm in during the day. During the show, I really enjoyed performing "No Debo," which is a track with DESTIN CONRAD, which is a really nice bachata. I was really excited to hear him in a Spanish slow world. He already comes from R&B, which is relatively slow sometimes. That was very fun to create. It was a little bit outside of my comfort zone, as well. We were both in it together to try something new. It was a great song to perform on the tour.

The deluxe was a great way to extend this world.The album was in black and white and then in the deluxe, I started to show a little bit more color again. I felt like it tied together really nice, because I didn't want it to feel like a part one, part two. I wanted it to feel like another door for the fans to step through. I wasn't ready to let go of this era. That was my way of saying, "I want to stay here. I need a late checkout."

I have a question from a fan. She's a friend of mine who makes Spanish music. When you hit a creative wall what do you usually do to get unstuck?

I usually go out with my friends. Look at him wearing the sunglasses; he's like, "Yup." [Points to Jonuel sitting across the room]. There are moments where I call him up and I'm like, "I need to live. I need to feel, absorb." If you think about it, my job is to live, to be able to tell. If I don't live, what am I going to talk about? Sometimes we'll do simple things, like grab dinner. We like to people watch. We'll go to speakeasies. We took a trip to Turks and Caicos, and we just stayed at a house with some friends. We went out a little bit for drinks, and then I came back and finished the whole deluxe.

So shoot a text to your friends is what I'm hearing.

Yes, shoot a text to your friends and help them take you out of it. Remember to live. We need to live.

Earlier this year, you had an ad campaign with Gap, and it honestly just completely took over the Internet. How did that feel? 

It was the first Spanish-speaking campaign they've done ever, and the first queer Latina female on it. So it was already special, whether it got a kajillion views or whether it got a hundred something, we were just happy to be able to do something that felt like it was intentional and something that should be happening a little more, you know. It was so awesome to see the love from the fans. We got to do our take on the classic Gap hoodie, which was really cool. It was also the first time they had done a campaign with a song of the artist that was in the campaign. Because KATSEYE, for example, was "Milkshake." So it was a first time for a lot of things. As a whole, the campaign was super special. 

In your music and your online presence, you're really unapologetically yourself. Is that something that’s always been like that or something you grew into? How does that work? 

Honestly, I think I've always been like that. I have very early memories of, I don't know, walking into a store with my mom, and maybe she was unintentionally walking with me to the female section of the clothing, but I was always like, "No, but I like that Spider-Man shirt" or "I like that thing that mannequin is wearing over there." And she would just let me be. I always wore whatever I wanted to wear and listened to the music that I wanted to listen to. My parents were always very loving and instilled in me to just be happy and be who I am. Around my teenage years, usually people start to get a little more self-conscious because teens are just sometimes so mean. Growing older, I started to lean towards just doing whatever I want to do again and loving myself. If you live thinking about what another person is gonna think, then you're just not living for yourself. Or maybe not living at all. I still work on it and I still try to grow. I'm always going to be a student no matter what. I really like that. And my fans always push me to just do whatever that feels like.

No one's ever perfect. No one ever knows everything.

I think perfect is boring anyway.

Before you created this music career for yourself, you were a professional soccer player and tattoo artist. Do you miss those career paths at all?

Sometimes I do miss tattooing. Sometimes. My friends are like "When is the day you're gonna pick up the machine again? I will be first in line." Sometimes I miss soccer as well, just for fun. We try to get involved in whatever we can. Recently we were in Puerto Rico with Rauw Alejandro, who doing a great exhibition for the female soccer team that qualified for the World Cup; it's the first time ever. We were there cheering them on because we wore that jersey once and know how it feels. I still use things that I learned from soccer today. It just feels like a different field. Tattooing was something that really helped me come out of my shell socially. I was always very introverted. Tattooing is one-on-one with somebody for hours, and you're doing something on their skin that's gonna stay there forever. I do miss them sometimes. Maybe for fun, I'll tattoo my friends again.

Do you have a favorite tattoo that you've done? 

I do think about this one girl occasionally. I did a very small bluebird on her. I remember she came into the shop. I think it was her first tattoo, and she was telling me this story about how her grandma had recently passed away and always said that if she reincarnated, it would be into a bluebird. She was telling me the story about how the day that her grandmother died, or the day of her funeral, a bluebird stood on her bedroom window. I remembered that story very vividly. Sometimes I'll think about her. I wonder how she's doing and if she’s seen another bluebird and thought about her grandma. 

What's next? You're obviously on tour for a bit. Anything you can share with us? Any new music? Any, I don't know, cool photo shoots? You're on the cover of a magazine every other day I feel like.

I'm always in the studio. Whether it’s working towards another album or not. The studio and the stage are my favorite places on earth. Right now I'm just really focused on these upcoming shows on the tour. It's my first time doing arenas, so I'm really excited about that. Then afterwards, it's Christmas time, which is the best time in Puerto Rico. I'm just looking forward to tour and then going back home to be with my parents and my dog. 

Who are your OnesToWatch?

Right now I'm super, super, super, super, super obsessed with Sailorr. I don't know if you've heard of Sailorr, but you guys need to look her up. She's insane. She dropped an album from FROM FLORIDA'S FINEST last year, I think, and now she just dropped the Deluxe — FROM FLORIDA'S FINEST DELU/XXX [for my delusional ex]. That's the name of the deluxe. She's super fire, and she's queer as well, which is honestly a nice thing for me to connect with. That would be my number one recommendation for anybody looking for new artists. I think I know every single song of hers. She’s way too dope.

Listen to Do Not Disturb: Late Checkout below: