Millyz was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1991. By the time he was five years old, Eminem had dropped his debut album, Infinite, then found enormous success with The Slim Shady LP in 1999 when Millyz was 8. Eminem was a bona fide superstar by the time Millyz reached high school and inadvertently gave him the confidence to pursue a rap career. Speaking to AllHipHop in a recent interview, Millyz reflected on the profound influence Eminem had on him.
“Eminem was probably the one that made me go, ‘He did it, I can do it,'” he said. “Because there wasn’t that example. Eminem, Paul Wall. As far as me, looking in the mirror like, ‘OK, there are some serious white rappers.”
Millyz also admitted he didn’t know who Eminem originally sampled for the 2000 single “Stan,” which actually revolved around Dido’s “Thank You” released just months earlier.
“I sampled the sample that [Eminem] sampled,” he added. “I sampled Dido’s voice that he sampled on ‘Stan.’ So, I sampled the ‘Stan’ sample. Even when I put it out I said, ‘Yo, I just cleared the ‘Stan’ sample!’ To me, it’s a ‘Stan’ sample cause I don’t know the other song. But thank you to her.”
Millyz is currently doing the rounds in support of his latest album, Blanco 6. A close affiliate of Jadakiss, he partnered with The LOX OG at the multimedia creative collective, SoRaspy. He’s also collaborated with the likes of Dave East, Mozzy, Peezy, Fivio Foreign, Styles P and G Herbo.
Elsewhere in the interview, Millyz opened up about his struggles with drug addiction and mental health, his position as an empath and, of course, the new album. Watch the full interview with AllHipHop‘s Chuck Creekmur above.