Skip to main content
Enjoy your Milc while you still can Portland.
Hip-hop fans have likely noticed an absence in the concert calendar over the past six months or so, with scant few live appearances by Benjamin Johnson, the sharp-tongued, wickedly funny rapper known simply as Milc. The reason? He ain’t been here.
Johnson has been plenty busy in 2024, working in L.A. on Affordable Luxuries, a new album he recorded with producer and Joey Bada$$ associate Chuck Strangers that drops Dec. 6, and spending a lot of time in New York in the wake of getting signed to GoodTalk, an entertainment company launched last year by Jonny Shipes whose roster includes Cam’ron and That Mexican OT.
Every move is part of Milc’s slow withdrawal from Portland as he seeks greater renown than our humble city can offer.
“I think it’s easier to get in front of eyes now more than ever,” Johnson says, speaking from his crash pad in Portland and nursing a wicked post-Thanksgiving hangover, “but I also think Portland just has a hard time. We have no infrastructure for anybody that makes rap music. There’s no industry. There’s no platform.”
What Portland is not short on is talent, a truth that will be on full display at Dairy Fest 2024, an event that Milc and his friend and DJ Andy Savoie are throwing at Mississippi Studios on Dec. 12. For the first in what he hopes will be a new annual event, Johnson has called on a bunch of brilliant rappers from the underground scene, including Nacho Picasso, former THEESatisfaction member Stas THEE Boss, and Woodburn’s own Dobleon. Milc promises “some notable Portland guests will be onstage, and some people from out of town. Surprises as well.”
In addition to being something of a homecoming for Johnson, Dairy Fest feels like a victory lap for an artist who has been on a steady upward trajectory since emerging from his self-imposed hiatus in 2020.
As WW reported as part of his entry in the unranked 2021 Best New Band lineup, Milc came up in the early ’10s as part of an anything-goes duo known as Load B. But when that project dissolved, he spent around five years in an artistic slumber, only to emerge with a vengeance during the pandemic. He dropped a mess of freestyles on his social media accounts that sparked a bonfire of attention among his peers.
Soon enough, Johnson was a constant presence in studios and onstage throughout the city. And his skills as pop culture-savvy, braggadocious lyricist started drawing in admirers like Philly label Three Dollar Pistol, which released The Fish That Saved Portland, his brilliantly cockeyed collaboration with producer Televangel, in 2023, and inspired Shipes to slip into Johnson’s DMs earlier this year.
“I recognized his name because he’s the guy that signed Nipsey Hussle and Big K.R.I.T. and found a bunch of talent,” Johnson says. “I still didn’t think nothing of it, but I gave him my number. He called me the next morning. That was in March. By May, I was signed to the label and kind of started living in New York.”
Johnson is the first to admit that his cross-country move has been easier than it has likely been for most other Portland expats. “I get pretty babied because I have all these resources,” he says. He’s constantly working, either on new music projects or as co-host with Shipes of the freewheeling podcast The GoodTalk Show. “It’s pretty sophomoric,” Johnson says. “Just us kind of shitting on each other and everything. There’s no real premise.”
Still, with over 400,000 subscribers to The GoodTalk Show’s YouTube channel, the podcast is another big stride forward for the rapper as he looks toward a busy 2025 that kicks off with a European tour with New York MC Rome Streetz.
With all this momentum, though, I had to know if he still felt, as he told WW’s Matt Singer back in 2021, that he was “still writing the same song over and over again” and if he had finally found the song that he fucked with most.
“No, no, no,” he says, chuckling. “That’ll never happen. That’s the point, I think. I have not gotten it right yet. Maybe a little closer, but nah. Still far away.”
SEE IT: Dairy Fest 2024 at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 7 pm Thursday, Dec. 12. $20. 21+.