Millyz Interview: Rapper Talks Record-Breaking Homecoming Show and How It Feels Being Boston’s Golden Child

On “Loosies With Matches,” the ninth track off Millyz’ latest project Blanco 7, the rapper at one point abruptly stops rapping to just speak his mind to his supporters.

“You gotta have courage just walkin’ out the door in the mornin’, because you know dudes will kill you for this dream you’re trying to maintain,” he says. “That same success you’re chasing after, someone will murder you for it.”

I ask Millyz about those bars because last Saturday, the Cambridge-bred spitter had more eyes on him than ever before: During what became a record-breaking headlining night at MGM Music Hall near Boston’s Fenway Park, Millyz captivated the sold-out crowd alongside Skrilla and Benny The Butcher. With MGM’s 5,000-plus seats all filled, Millyz estimates it might be the most tickets a Boston rapper has ever sold for one show in their home city. The colossal experience obviously put a battery in Millyz back, but he admits the monumental nature of it was at times “spooky,” especially because there are no Boston-area rappers doing it at his level.

“It’s not the easiest to come home sometimes, because of the level of misunderstanding,” Millyz says. “A lot of people are just really out of the loop when it comes to this music thing. It’s not the same level of understanding as people in New York have, because they’ve seen people fly. Out here there’s almost a sense of…” He pauses for a moment, choosing his words carefully: “Like it’s almost this impossible thing that you did, and they kinda wanna deny that.”

Billboard chats with Millyz about his record-breaking night, his new album and the Celtics rough season below.

How we feelin’ man? The Celtics aren’t doing so great. Jayson Tatum is down with an achilles tear looks like. What are your thoughts on the Celts right now?

I’m pretty devastated, you know? I’m also somebody who — I was able to witness a championship, man. I caught the confetti. Nipsey Hussle’s got a line where he says, “Even if it’s only temporary, at least we had the s—t.” I don’t think that it’s all over, but it’s definitely a sad day to see Tatum go out with a non-contact injury.

What were your thoughts when you saw it happen?

It was bad to be going down 3-1 to the Knicks regardless. So it just put everything in perspective on how much that didn’t even matter, compared to Tatum getting injured. I think it would be amazing if we could just beat the Knicks without Tatum. I don’t think we can win a championship without him. Hopefully, we could, you never know, but it would be cool to beat the Knicks in a couple more games just to stress out the fanbase.

How are you feeling about the reception to Blanco 7 so far?

I feel great about it, it’s something I wanna stay on and sink my teeth into. Projects come and go so fast nowadays. I’m fully intending to do it the way that they used to back in the day, when they would drop the album and then push singles off the album. That’s my goal with this. I wanna see if I could replicate that formula.

Take me a bit more through the Blanco mindset versus the Katrina’s Son or Holy Water mindset. When did you know you were making a Blanco record?

I kinda gotta build the foundation first, it’s like building a house. So I gotta have 3-4 foundational records, and I think one was “I Understand” with NoCap, “Dope Sellers” with East and a few others and that’s when I knew I gotta go full throttle with this thing.

You just came off a historic show in your hometown. Before the show even happened, when did you decide you wanted to pursue MGM Fenway as a possible venue? Was it nerve-racking?

I went back and forth on whether I should do House of Blues again or the MGM. The number [of seats] they told me for the MGM was so fundamentally shocking when I first heard it compared to House of Blues. House of Blues is like 2,500 and then MGM is 5,700. It’s a big jump. The MGM is spooky because just the floor holds the whole capacity for the House of Blues. So that was a little scary for me, but I just had to commit to it after a certain point.

I study Boston history as far as Boston rap, and there’s never been a Boston rapper that’s sold more than 2,600 in the Boston area, so I knew as far as we passed that 2,600 mark I knew we were in uncharted territory. It was very Hail Mary-ish, and the way ticket sales are going these days, people are buying closer to the actual show now because of how the economy is, so that wasn’t the most comforting feeling.

You’re hands down the most popular rapper to emerge out of Cambridge and Boston in years. What do you think it is about the Cambridge and Boston rap scene? Why do you think it’s so hard for rappers to break out into the mainstream from those cities?

I actually think there’s not enough examples. When you’re in these other cities, there are people that blew up, that you can point to and it’s tangible, it’s there, it’s like, “Look at this guy down the street he blew up.” Even if you’re a pessimist, you could still see the examples of people that took it to another level. When it comes to Boston, because there’s no example for 30 something years, people start to think it can only be one person. That there’s gotta be the one savior. Other cities don’t look at it like that. They have more of a casual mindset towards artists blowing up compared to here. We just have nothing to look at. I had to really go to New York and look at rappers that were already lit.

Is that what inspired your move to New York early on in your career?

Nah, for sure. Then you get around the circles and you realize there’s kind of a formula to this thing.

How does it feel knowing you might be that example for Boston?

I just hope people can see it and reverse engineer what I did as much as possible, but I do try to bring people around to see it. I try to show them this s—t in all its glory. Anything I’m doing when I know I’m doing it on a grand scale, and I’m not even a mainstream artist, but I am somebody who’s made this my profession. So I try to bring people around just so they can witness and have a point of reference now.

That’s important because like you said those superstar examples haven’t been around. I imagine certain people may have less tact when approaching you though.

Yeah, for real. People don’t really know how to deal with artists and it kinda becomes mythical. I’m somebody who talks to anybody, I have a lot of relationships. If you’re from Massachusetts, it’s not too hard to know somebody who actually knows me, but that word of mouth could go either way. But on the other spectrum of it, it’s super love!… So its polarizing.

When you were backstage, what was it like to feel all that energy at MGM?

I didn’t know it was packed out like that. I was just hoping the floor was packed, but I was [dealing] with that hometown s—t. You start getting all those calls about people not gettin’ in, “My girl’s family can’t get in,” little s—t like that. So I was going through those annoying things all the way up until showtime, but once I walked out I was like, “Oh, we did it,” You know?

What song really set the fans off?

A lot of my catalog went well, but of course “Risk Takers” went crazy. It was cool to see songs like “Swim” and “High Beams” and some of my singing songs go crazy. There was a lot of girls up front, so the ratio keeps getting better at my shows. I strive to have it to have it [70 percent] girls one day, and I’m seeing that shift, so it’s a beautiful thing.

When did you learn it was a record-breaking show?

I knew just optically just seeing it, cause like I said I studied this Boston rap s—t. There’s three rappers that sold out the House of Blues. Joyner [Lucas] has done bigger numbers in the 508, but just as far as a kid from the 617 born in a Boston hospital and raised in this area it’s the biggest in the actual city. It feels dope.

What’s next for you? Where does Millyz go from here?

Just more goals that seem hard to accomplish and scratching them off the list.