Meet MSB Mario Milan, the spanish writer paving the way for Urban Literature

MSB has gained notoriety around Spanish media for being the creator of bilingual urban literature. His novel ‘Lewis “My Soul” Bailey’ worked its way up the Amazon charts to number 1 for 5 weeks, this was aided by MSB’s mixing of the Spanish and English language, aka Spanglish. 2020 taught us that MSB is more than the novelist that we know, and what actually lead us to him is his new found creative output of poetry, which we discovered on
Spotify. MSB’s life is like the city he houses… full of winding paths that pass some of the most amazing memories and depressing turns. So join us as we unfold what lives within the mind of ‘El Niño de la Pili’.

Mario, it’s nice to finally speak, even though it’s through a computer. Tell me, what is being a writer to you?

Happy to be here talking to you and we are going to burn this as a Medium: to be a writer for me is to be a prostitute of human sensations. I’m the best. I breathe in the abstract and breathe out an explosion of words. I’m always on the corner, hungry and waiting for a new stimulus. I am a high class whore, so they pay me as such because they know my services are worth it. You know, I love writing, that’s what we’re here for, the other works, they’re meant to kill the art we create. So I am the verb to write, not the adjective, the writer.

We have been looking at other interviews and you have never said what the meaning of MSB is, would you like to share it with us?

Nah, it’s a romantic meaning, and I prefer it to be just for me, as I’m the one who’s romanticised it. It’s an acronym, I can tell you that, it looks good for my lyrics, but the meaning is mine.

‘Lewis -My Soul- Bailey’ is about a boy from England with schizophrenia, how did you get to know this story? & did you expect the reaction you’d have?

Lewis, he’s a boy from Widnes, just by Liverpool, that’s what the history takes place, and where I lived for a few months. Martyn, my friend who I met in Barcelona, we shared a home and a life together in Barcelona, and I had learnt so much about his home that he offered to let me live there for a few months. There I met Owen Conroy, he’s one of Lewis’ close friends, after spending many nights in his home with more joints than memory, he told me the
heartbreak that Lewis lived through, and about the hole he left in the small community of his friends. When I returned to Barcelona I buyed a 3 gram bag of coc*ine and wrote the history. Yeah, I knew I was on to something when I wrote this story, when I told my father, ‘Papa, it’s like Guardiola’s 4–3–3 the first time he plays it in the Champions League, something surreal, but
effective and beautiful’. I need that possession of the ball, the goals end up coming alone, you know…

Having Spanish speakers in our team we have been able to verify that your book is a fusion of two languages. Why this way of writing? & does the fusion aid the genre of Urban Literature?

It’s my natural way of expression, Spanglish. I speak like this, the vast majority of my friends are English, I lived in Liverpool, I’m influenced by it. My novels, they’re me, I try to make my voice and my words match my real life. It’s the way of the young spanish, on the streets, we separate parts of the words, we take the full word and shorten it, we’re not afraid of a dictionary, we’re natural and direct you know? Difficult, because definitely Urban Literature is playing guitar with the left in a world full of right-handers … I feel like Jimi Hendrix, the rest are my Woodstock.

How do you see literature coexisting with current and future technological trends?

Literature died when the writers started writing for the machine of Instagram. Now she says the letters are viral or which are not, and for free… They write for likes, literature has been lost. Writers use bots, pay for advertisements… They are boring, f*cking ugly and old, people don’t actually care about the writers, they’re like your butcher, until I came along that is. Finally someone interesting and connected to the other’s daughters… I am handsome. My mind is very fast and I f*ck well. I like the writers daughters, all of them. I am a good machine.

Speaking of your personal literary tastes, what are your references as a writer?

As a child my father and grandfather told me the stories I love. Bukowski is the hardest writer in history, Burroughs, Henry Miller making Marilyn moan. Cortázar in Hopscotch and me, you know… me just me and myself… Call me Harry Potter but with a 2021 wand.

As we said at the beginning, you publish your poems on Spotify, do you use the same creative process as to make a book? And there’s a lot of musical elements, where do you get inspiration from?

They sound catchy as f*ck, but they’re not songs. They’re spoken words with a beat. I like the poems to be repetitive, I like the speed and the choruses, I love autotune, really I would sleep with autotune. I like to include what I love in music in my poetry. Depending on the time I’m inspired by different singers, but obviously I look at those who are experimental with their voice, like Uzi or Travis Scott, I really like Playboi Carti, Eminem is God and in Spain, I love
Sticky MA and as a constant Little Grace from the UK, they are my inspiration from always on a musical level and ideas. As well, the creative process is different, I write the poems on paper and pen with a lot of magic stuff and it is something fast and effusive without being methodical. I like that it sounds like mumble poetry. I’m not really methodical in any of my arts… Well, Mumble Poetry sounds amazing init’…

You have collaborated with clothing brands, we saw you at the last Mercedes Fashion Week in Madrid, you have done editorials; How did you get into that world? What is the relationship between fashion and literature?

That world came to me. I was always fashion, haha. No, seriously, I’m always very fashionable and Najjat Harb (the Mexican designer) wrote me on Instagram so that I could be the image of her fashion editorial and well, I said yes because she told me I would wear a woman’s dress. And after that, I don’t know, some magazines published the photos, I signed with Trend Models, I recited at the opening of Off Modo Fashion Festival and as you said I was lucky enough to perform in the Robber Rodriguez show at Mercedes Fashion Week from Madrid which was one of the best experiences of my life, really, it was very nice to see how Robber won the award and his family enjoyed it. It was nice that he gave me that opportunity and that people liked the show, that’s what it was about joining catwalk and the street vibes. Really there is the link between the catwalk and literature, in introducing a written story that is broadcast live later in the catwalk show. Currently the presentations are presented by post on Instagram so you need a specific way of writing to transmit one type of collection or another. Sometimes the designer needs external writing to reach the consumer. When you’ve spent so many hours on your art, selling it becomes a messy and complicated task… I think that
literature and fashion go hand in hand but so far they have hardly come together. Until, once again, I arrived. A bond of union. I’ve been fashioning since La Pili, my mother, used to dress me…

It seems that Spanish artists are expanding beyond their borders more than ever, like Rosalia or C. Tangana among others. Do you like artists from your country, or do you prefer international ones? Could you tell us 5 artists you currently like?

Well, let me tell you first that I love Rosalia, I love her, pure Tracatá. And personally I think that art has no nationality or zone, it is free and the more it moves the better. I have no distinctions in where the artist who produces that art is from. It is a small mentality to anchor art to a geographical attitude, the word art was born to have no borders and encourage expansion. That said, Spain currently has great artists and I think we should bet more on ourselves.
Support each other. More and more artists from here speak more English, in turn we export our Spanish outside of here. And I don’t know, it’s hard to say 5 artists. I like many depending on the art. In fashion the aforementioned Najjat and Robber, I also like Fatima Miñana, Carmen Osaba, Marmade, Ryo Hats, Anel Yaos … I love Takashi Murakami as a total artist. In music I could spend days and days with Little Grace songs. Yung Beef is a reference and it
sounds everywhere. Love Sie777e spanish drill. I really like the El Coleta shorts. Almodóvar. All the Eloy de la Iglesia movies. Los Chichos… I’d be telling you names all day… In photography my favorites are Jesus Ubera and Rocío Aguirre. I would love a photoshoot with Rocío Aguirre actually, you know? Big sesh with Mrs. Aguirre haha.

So Mario, tell us about your day to day, 24 hours in the life of MSB Mario Milan?

I wake up at 4 in the afternoon. In the morning everything is fake. I hate people, but in the morning more. So wake up, I look at Kira, my German shepherd, I give her a kiss and I thank her for being one more day. We take a walk on the beach together. She usually quarrels with all the passing dogs. We come back home. I start smoking joints like a locomotive. I open the computer. I write or record according to the day and what my grandfather tells me from heaven. I listen to music and write/record until 00:00 that I call my drug dealer for magic stuff. So the mediocre writers are already sleeping and I write a while longer until that model you see on Instagram comes home and I have to tell her at 4 p.m. the next day to leave because Kira needs to walk. Easy day. I live in an eternal quarantine within my own creativity.

Tell us about your style, do you get inspired by someone when you dress? Does someone help you create the looks?

I always dress the same way. I like to wear a hat because my grandfather wore it. I like how my father dresses, traditional Spanish. Nobody tells me what I have to wear or anything like that, I wear my clothes to all the shows and I try to have my neighborhood dressmaker make the arrangements for me. I like to dress from the 60s and Brian Jones is my idol in terms of styling, the biggest… Then I really like Galliano.

To end the interview, what are your plans for 2021?

I’m going to publish the novel that will mark a before and after in literature. Simple and concise. I’m going to work with Najjat Harb on her new collection but she still won’t let me say anything. I want to continue to collaborate with designers in fashion, I find it fun and it nurtures me as a writer. And hopefully I can continue reciting and giving my poems inside Live shows and catwalks. But yes, this year is going to be simple in literature…

Mario, hopefully we can meet you when you’re next in the states. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity and love from Barcelona.

Credits:
Photography: MSB by Ana Amaral @agam.photography
MSB: @msbmario_milan
Lewis -My Soul- Bailey:
https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B0826C5M2T/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=3638&creative=24630&creativeASI
N=B0826C5M2T&linkCode=as2&tag=mariomsbmilan-21&linkId=71714c2cd00a7051ac9566d76d12bb25
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Th0IUfYkZZ4P3o463uRsn?si=bTN3mkcLTO2iLmxCFA63bq