Milovay Is Done Starting Over and Just Getting Started

There’s a version of Brandon Serrano that never would’ve landed this article. He spent years pushing names that weren’t working, watching his friends hype him up while the numbers refused to move. It took him a while to figure out the problem wasn’t the music. It was everything around it.

Now he goes by Milovay, and the difference is pretty obvious once you hear the self-titled EP he dropped February 20th.

The four-track project clocks in just under 13 minutes, but it doesn’t feel rushed or underdeveloped. “Finally Open,” “Silver Lining,” “Battle of the Two-Heads,” and “What I Need” each hold their own weight, and the sequencing gives the thing a genuine arc. That’s harder to pull off in a short format than people think. A lot of artists cram four songs together and call it an EP. Milovay actually built something.

The Worcester, Massachusetts native’s R&B and Afro-fusion sound pulls from a pretty specific but interesting set of influences. He’ll tell you Tech N9ne got him hooked on music as a teenager, the speed rapping, the engineer involvement, the obsessive fan connection. But the vocal style owes more to Tory Lanez, that raspy-to-high register range with layered harmonies underneath. It’s a recognizable template, but Milovay doesn’t just ape it. The execution feels considered, not borrowed. And “Silver Lining” is where that execution gets a visual to match it. The song itself is about that specific kind of overthinking that comes with trying to impress someone, not knowing if you’re giving too much or not enough, stuck somewhere between grand gestures and playing it cool.

The video, shot and edited by @trill_is_bliss and featuring co-star @tesqhila, plays that tension straight. There’s no melodramatic breakup, no fantasy sequence. It’s the uncomfortable middle ground the song is actually about, wanting to go all in but second-guessing every move. That’s a harder thing to visualize than heartbreak, and it works.

This is his second EP in just a few months. He dropped “The Lost Scripts of Phenoxism” back in December 2025, and the new one clearly goes in its own direction. That kind of output discipline is notable. Short-form projects released consistently are the current play for independent artists trying to stay relevant without burning through a full album rollout budget, and Milovay seems to genuinely understand the logic of it rather than just following a trend.

He’s also pretty candid about the rebranding process. Years under names that weren’t working, surrounded by yes-people who convinced him the problem was elsewhere. It’s a familiar story in independent music, maybe more common than people admit. What’s worth noting is that he doesn’t frame the past as wasted time. “Peregrine,” “Punani Papi,” all of it, he sees as part of what built him. The willingness to own every version of yourself instead of pretending they didn’t happen is actually rarer than the rebrand itself.

“There is no deadline to make it in this industry,” he said. “I could be 41 and still make moves as if I’ve been doing this for X amount of years.” He means it. Part of what changed is practical too. He talks about finally understanding how to navigate blogs, push his releases correctly, and use social media as an actual tool rather than an afterthought. For independent artists in 2026, that gap between talent and platform literacy is where careers stall. Milovay figured out which side of that gap he needed to close.

Right now the focus is purely on releasing and promoting. No tour dates, no spoilers on what’s coming this summer, though he hints it’ll be worth paying attention to. For a catalog that’s only a few months old under the current name, there’s already a real foundation here.

You can follow Milovay on YouTube, Instagram, and stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud.