Sud Pang

Milli started out competing on the Thai TV show The Rapper 2, where judges praised her expressive delivery. A fan of hip-hop since about the eighth grade, she has named Nicki Minaj as her inspiration. Her first single, Phak Khon, a sarcastic anti-bullying song about school, made her popular in early 2020. In June that year she followed it with Sud Pang, a song about her own life, dreams and beauty that hops between Northern and Southern Thai, Isan, Japanese, phasa lu and English. She also had a sharp tongue offline. In July 2021 Prayut Chan-o-cha's government charged her for criticising its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing her of posting information that threatened national security. Musicians and fans rallied behind her under the hashtag SaveMilli, and in the end she was fined 2,000 baht. Nine months later, on 17 April 2022, she walked onto the Coachella stage with the 88rising collective, the first Thai solo artist ever to perform there. Her set included jabs at century-old trains still running on Thai railways and at a notorious corruption case over light poles costing 100,000 baht each. Then she finished by eating a plate of mango sticky rice on stage. Back home, orders for the dessert doubled in some shops, and one Bangkok seller had to prepare an extra 30 kilograms of sticky rice. A song about her own life and dreams had led to one of the biggest stages in the world.