DORIAN MILTON RAPPER TURNED VISUAL ARTIST

10/9/23

Dorian Milton Rapper turned visual artist

Dorian Milton, also known as Fine T, Released his first series of paintings after he announced on twitter he was giving up the rap game after the release of his disappointing third album, “Locked Out,” received lukewarm praise after its release last June. Milton teamed up with Swiss Beatz, an avid art collector to help organize the one man release at the Eat My Shorts Gallery in Beverly Hills. Asked why he decided to step away from the booth and pursue a career as a visual artist, Milton had this to say,

“Everything I do is visual, my music is visual, my life style is visual, my fuckin’ energy is visual, you feel me? So this just felt like a natural transition. Plus, I seen how much these niggas was making out here selling garbage, and I was like I can do that. This is like my fourth album, every painting is a track....and everyone is fire.”

While there was initial skepticism at first, who can forget the avalanche of meme’s last summer with Milton’s head photoshopped into famous 16th century paintings, anticipation for the show started to build when a number of athletes, celebrities, influencers, tweeted out their support for Mr. Milton. Swiss Beatz backed that support with the promise of helping the ex-rapper organize his first show. The hype really reached a crescendo though when established Black artists such as Swig Teller, Imani Williamson, and Oliver Alan Tofou, voiced their support after meeting Milton through mutual friends in New York later that year. By the time the doors opened last week, there was a crowd, almost as large, but not quite as rowdy as one you might find at a Fine T concert. “The work sold out in about 20 minutes, probably less,” Landon Donovan, the gallery's owner gushed. The hype has only picked up steam since.

“I can’t think of an artist making a splash like this in a long time,” When asked why people love his work, Milton had this to say,

“Art people love my shit because it’s different, it’s cool shit, it’s bringing names and celebrities that you would have never seen in this world before to these events. It’s inspired a lot of other cats to pick up a brush, Nigga’s get to feel civilized you know? We still telling stories, expressing our world through our talents, but you know now Betty White and Professor X lookin’ buls is fucking with our shit too.”

While that may certainly be part of it, art has always been about more who’s at these event’s than what is on the walls, Milton’s talent for the blunt, that saw him skyrocket to fame after his debut album “Clockin’ In.” and follow up album , “Glock. Glock.” is still shining through; he has a unique direct simplicity that veils more complex motives.

Take for example “I Get $”, the 30x30” canvas (all the paintings are squares, like an album cover) he painted the entirety of a viridian green and scribbled on top, using an oil stick, “If U R seeing this...I get money.” Or the painting “Trap {star}” where Mr. Milton has painted a crude star in the most obnoxious yellow next to a “t” that also resembles a cross against a dark all black background. In both these paintings he is simplifying the picture plain in order to communicate ideas that while on the surface may seem cliche, or stereotypical, if you look deeper, Milton is actually displaying his understanding of history, semiotics, language, and more importantly his audience. In “I Get $” it is a self declaration, one you may hear in any standard rap track, but in the context of the art world, not to mention the use of “U R instead of You Are, and the phrase itself being a play on on Drake’s 2015 album, “if you are reading this it’s too late,” It also brings into question class and generational divides, and provokes the question, what does a painting actually represent in the homes of the wealthy if not, “I get money.” Milton is uniting ideas and worlds that while they may appear polar opposites, hold similar values.

Similarly in Trap star, Milton is using religious imagery both as a nod to art history, but also as a means to highlight the role that drug dealers play as Jesus-like figures. And how that role often leads to sacrificing freedom and often death. The star acts as a symbol for guiding light, which is emphasized through the deep black background it sits on. Faintly in the corner you can see Milton has scribbled with the back of his brush “keep the light on.” Milton’s use of language is both hopeful but also real. In one sense he is saying keep hope alive, while in another it is simply an acknowledgement that in the trap game, to have your light out means you are out of business, dead, locked up. So to keep the light on is to do what must be done to survive. Similar to his music, Milton is able to weave together his own personal story with universal resonance.
Take for example another painting in this series, “On My Mama” where he crudely depicts the Virgin Mary in the center of the painting laying in what appears to be a bed of hay, a fence separating her from a reddish-brown background. On one side of the figure there is a large opal oval that perhaps could be interpreted as a doorway, or a stretched out moon. That is until you realize that the fence post behind the figure on the other side is shaped as an “H” and suddenly all you can see is “HO.”
What appears like one of Milton’s more gentle, family friendly pieces, is actually quite dark when you consider that Milton’s mother, Rhonda, who is a frequent subject in his music, was a prostitute. Milton’s music often dealt with raising a family in poverty, and has often said he is proud of his mother despite her

time in prison and everything they went through. This can also be seen in his painting entitled “bred,” where Milton depicts a family of 5 at the dining room table. The table is more like a card table in appearance, the mother, dressed like she’s from the 1950’s in the middle, holds a tray with a brick of cocaine in the shape of a loaf of bread. There’s rats along the floor, on each side her children flank her, their brown silhouettes skinny and frail. Once again there is implied art historical religious reverence in the composition, as Milton illuminates a personal trauma. There is no adult male in the picture. Milton does not shy away from his lack of role models, or his time as a drug dealer in his music, nor in his paintings. In another painting “self portrait,” a bright red background with two 9mm’s that mirror one another forming eyebrows and eyes, the trigger the pupils, and a bright white line underneath that one can only understand as cocaine knowing Milton’s past. Yousee a face at first even though there is none there, it’s not happy, it’s not sad either, angry maybe? Mad? Once again the punch of color and simplification pack a wallop, is this really how Milton see’s himself? There is a self scrutiny to the work where you get the sense that Milton is aware of who he is, but also how others see him, he plays off those assumptions of competency and identity frequently in terms of the variety, or range, of skill and complexity in his paintings; showing that Milton probably always had more proficiency with the brush than his audience realized. At the gallery we asked Milton’s longtime friend, and hype man, Braxton Tells, also known as T RAX, about Milton’s origin’s as a painter. He had this to say,

“People thought he was crazy, but no my guys always been nice with it, all the way back in middle school he used to draw these crazy pictures {while we were} in class,” he continued “The rap thing, the drug thing, it’s all just a way to get money, once he realized he had an audience, he realized this next step was a no brainer, cat’s always one step ahead.”

When asked what he thought his friend may do next, Tello left us with a bread crumb on what his “5th Album,” might be.
“Don’t be surprised if Gordon Ramsey, or Wolfgang Puck start tweeting about him next.”
I can’t wait to see what he cooks up.