Top End’s rising hip-hop truth teller Yung Milla returns with his stand-out new single ‘Land Down Under’. The new single is less paradise, more gangsta: the urban landscape of Palmerston, south of Darwin, is a place where violence and temptation are real and ever present. It’s ripe territory for the 20-year-old Marranungu rapper determined to right wrongs and rise.
Yung Milla explained, “'Land Down Under' is a song about my crew, and the town where I grew up. Like a lot of places up here it’s got problems and we get through by sticking together and staying strong, trying to make it out, looking up rather than down.”
‘Land Down Under’ is a celebration, a proud statement of belonging woven with a killer guitar line and a fist-pumping groove that’s fired up many a Top End gathering — not least June’s Barunga Festival, where Yung Milla ignited a sea of 5,000 new fans with his spectacular backflipping stage presence and sharp wordplay.
Yung Milla’s story is not untouched by tragedy. Too many friends and relatives have been lost to drugs or violence or the terminal cycle of ‘the System’: the overzealous and misguided pursuit of “justice” that results in youth incarceration statistics that shame the nation.
He credits his brother, emerging superstar J-Milla, for the change in direction that put him on his path of redemption. Today Yung Milla works as an Adventure Therapist and at Saltbush accommodation centre for young Aboriginal men on bail from detention, helping kids like him find their own paths through troubled times.
Yung Milla added, “Like the song says, I know I’m not perfect. I’m a young man trying to right my wrongs. I’ve still got stuff to deal with, and it ain’t easy to live with that. Here in my land down under it makes me want to head for the top and take my boys with me. We will always look out for each other. We tight.”
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