The first time I heard Milo, I felt the same kind of elation that I felt for the debut album by The Streets – the freshness of the new and unknown, plus that special something that makes you want to listen to it again after the initial excitement wanes. However, unlike Mike Skinner, Milo’s follow up to his debut (I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here), is still interesting and engaging.

Milo deliberately sets himself apart from mainstream rap and the topics it usually covers (although his portfolio does feature a racially motivated track, hah!) and focuses more on telling his individual story. The more honest and self-centered he is while doing this, the more interesting it is. That’s beacuse Milo is different – he’s a bit of a softie, a vegetarian with humanitarian interests, a still-maturing, doubting intellectual word-wizard.

Just like Estonian rapper Chalice keeps stumbling on local superstars, Milo includes US media figures into his lyrics. This makes grasping his cultural context as a whole rather difficult for an outsider – cartoons and feature films, computer games, popular internet destinations, wrestling heroes and their tricks… All of that combined with Nietzsche, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer…

However, even with gaps in understanding his references, one can only take joy in his citing-worthy lyrics, the depth of his vocabulary and its phonetic richness, the rhythmic beauty of alliteration, and metaphors distorting meaning – all of this makes up these two (things that happen at day and things that happen at night) ear-friendly albums.