This past January, I had the opportunity to talk to Michael Millions in hopes of getting his help with a question I had about the orientation and pulse of Virginia’s hip hop culture. Michael, a Richmond native, is one of the most accomplished and seasoned emcees in the city’s rap scene. His latest single “BLACK MAN” is a collaboration with fellow Richmonder jazz group Butcher Brown and project he showed great excitement for when we talked. The record is rhythmic and raw, musical and methodical. And unabashedly Richmond. Read on to see just how art and hip-hop looks and feels in Virginia's capital city from one of the city’s steadiest creators.
Michael Millions credits his keen sense of locational space to a big family move at the age of 6. “Everything is not the same everywhere,” he told me during our phone conversation. I began my conversation with the Richmond rapper by asking for clarification on conflicting reports of his birthplace. “I was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina,” he revealed. “But, I didn’t live there. My Pops was in the military so I was born on the base down there.” In an effort partially to forge an early commonality and partially to show him where I was coming from musically, I said that I was also born in North Carolina and Fayetteville native J. Cole is my favorite artist. Potentially crossing the line between informed journalist and Wiki-page stalker, I added that Cole was born in Frankfurt, Germany due to a similar military background.
Then, Michael Millions, once an aspiring emcee and now a full-blown emblem for Richmond, Virginia hip hop, tells me his earliest memories as a child aren’t in the United States at all, but in an apartment in Aschaffenburg, Germany. He recalls outside air that smelled of French bread from bakeries, frequent street festivals and certain cooking tactics he still uses; “ (Germany’s) relationship with meat, fire and beer is kind of crazy. That stuck with me my whole life. I love grilling out and when I grill I use beer as an additive to my grilling situation. I don’t know why. I guess it’s a flavor that reminds me of my childhood.” He also remembers his first memories of life in America being tormented by relentless summer heat; “Being that young, you don’t got no concept of the world. You just know you was on a flight and the joint was dumb long and now you live in America. And the first summer is blazing hot. I thought it would last like a day. ‘You mean to tell me it’s gonna be like this for months? Oh my god!’”
Eventually, Michael found his way to Richmond, where some decades later he has built a new home and studio on the city’s east side where he calls me from now. When I ask the question of where his musical ambition stems from, he tells me of a vivid flashpoint where his parents gifted him a boom box, and two cassette tapes: The Bodyguard movie soundtrack by Whitney Houston and What’s The 411? by Mary J. Blige. “I was no longer interested in playing video games. I remember my little brother, that was the first time he could be ‘Player 1’. And I've been that same kid since. I’ve been in suspended animation since that moment,” he laughs.
Michael agreed to talk to me, after exchanging social media pleasantries, about a question I’ve mulled over often since I crossed state lines for school three years ago; Just how south is Virginia? An awkward question to ask about a place with a distinctive political history, all of its square mileage under the Mason Dixon Line, and housing the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond. “I don’t care about that Mason Dixon Line.” Michael said. “That stuff is all fluff.”
Well if Virginia’s geography and its history are not in question, why is Virginia’s cultural Southern-ality still in doubt? This question is essentially about culture. Is Virginia geographically, historically, and categorically a state in the Southeastern portion of the United States? Sure. But, what about culture? What about dialects, customs, food and art?
In 2021, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond showcased an exhibition entitled ‘Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse’. This exhibit exhaustively depicts the historical context of Southern blackness. From painful histories to ingratiated religion to identity-centric hip-hop, the collection of pieces curated by VFMA’s own Valerie Cassel Oliver was both a chilling and enlightening experience for those lucky enough to catch it during its tenure.
Regionality is especially important in hip-hop culture. It takes a certain measure of pride and identification in your origin to be respected. In this year's Super Bowl, the famed halftime show headlined hip-hop acts for the first time. The event held in the Los Angeles area appropriately featured international icons and LA County products Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar along with the aforementioned Blige, from New York.
Michael reminisces on the eras of hip hop where this regionality was paramount, an era he believes has been eclipsed by a generation focused on emulating styles rather than reflecting the home turf; “It’s like going into a grocery store. You know the fruit is going to be on this aisle. You know the chips are on this aisle… But now it’s like all delivery. If you want to listen to a person from Cali that makes music like they’re from Atlanta, you can get that.” Michael is effortlessly allegorical in this response, exemplary of the wordsmithery reflected in his music.
As for RVA, he believes Richmond, and Virginia as a whole, conforms to neither the traditional hip hop of New York and Mid-Atlantic cities or bleeds over into the trendy nastiness of the ‘Dirty South’. In fact, to Michael, that name in particular stands for one place; “Off rip, I think of Atlanta. Coming up, music was regional. So people in Florida wasn’t making music that was from the south.” Michael went on to cite Outkast as the main mascot for the Dirty South, with surrounding states and cities eventually getting caught in the web of what became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. “But I don’t think about Kentucky… I don’t even think about Memphis in that way… I feel like the Dirty South, when I reference it in my mind, I think about Atlanta.”
When asked where Richmond falls in his “musical geographical mind” as he called it, his answer follows a slight, but intentional pause, as if no one on Earth could possibly change his answer; “East Coast” he says confidently, unequivocally. “East Coast, I’ve always stood on that”
This springs Michael into an equally argumentative and poetic cypher on the logistics, schematics, and aesthetics that make Richmond and Virginia “the most East Coast” rap region. “Richmond is a hotbed in itself… due to the type of musicians that are here, the type of artists that are here, the food levels… We have actually our own flavors, our own approach to the world.”
Beyond hip hop, Michael credits Richmond with as much cultural influence as more popular cities like Memphis and New Orleans. “Virginia has given to the world for decades.” Michael says when asked about Virginia artists. “Forget all this hip hop stuff…” He transitions from poet to teacher; schooling me on Richmond’s influence on punk rock, jazz music, and live shows. “The biggest genre in Richmond is not hip hop. I thought it was but it's definitely rock and punk… but we gave that to the world!”
Born in North Carolina and partially raised in Germany, there is no question that Michael Millions is Virginia and Richmond through and through. He has made his name for well over a decade assuring his listeners that that fact is irreversible and undeniable. “The way the color of the sun hits the city when you’re downtown, it looks a certain way, it feels a certain way. The texture and tones and feelings and vibrations are just here.” This summons Michael’s thoughts of R&B legend D’Angelo, another Richmond native; “I use him as reference a lot of times because, when I was a kid, his music sounded like what I was looking at outside.”
Michael is admittedly hesitant to call his understanding of musical geography gospel. But, when it comes to his home, there is hardly a doubt in his mind: “Every artist that I’m in contact with, we all got our own. But the one thing that threads us together is the fact that we’re from the city, we have style in that.” He shouts out peers Anakin, Nickelus F and Radio B. “There’s something there that ties us. It don’t got nothing to do with the North, the South, the West, it’s totally East.”
“When the sun shines, it shines on the east first.”
Jackson Ward mural of Michael Millions in Richmond VA. Photo by Nils Wetsergard. (2018)
By Billy Listyl
6-17-22
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