His smart storytelling and wry jokes have helped put Midlands rap on the map. Now he wants to demonstrate rap’s power to deliver real-life change
“I’m not shy at all. I just … I’m not a very loud person,” says M1llionz. “I don’t really like attention. Which is a bit mad, obviously, cos I rap and that.”
The Birmingham drill rapper’s set this month at Wireless, the UK’s biggest rap festival, makes the suggestion seem far-fetched. Sharing a bill with US megastars and the chart-dominating UK new school, he plays the festival’s second stage just as last-minute announcement Giggs starts his set in the main arena. But M1llionz draws an adoring crowd, rowdy teenagers and twentysomethings shouting back every word to his anthemic single Lagga as a drizzly London evening turns to night.