Milan Credle

Rapper Milan Credle was hard at work on what he hoped would be his first full-length album when he almost lost everything.

Credle’s apartment, which he shared with his then-pregnant wife and their two daughters, last March became engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.

He and his family managed to make it safely out of their home at Willow Street Apartments in Pequea Township but lost the majority of their belongings.


They later learned the fire was started by a neighbor who left a cigarette on a balcony in their apartment complex.

Recovering from the fire was an arduous journey, and Credle had to put his album on hold. The rapper, however, is now itching to unleash what he considers to be his best work.

Credle, 26, is raising money on IndieGoGo to pay for the recording and distribution costs for the album. Supporters can contribute until midnight on Dec. 31. As of Thursday afternoon, Credle had raised $1,469 of his $5,000.

He and his wife, Olayinka Credle, and their three children have now moved back into Willow Street Apartments.

Olayinka Credle is the cofounder of Melanin Essentials, which sells chemical-free beauty products for women of color. The company won Lancaster’s Great Social Enterprise Pitch in 2016.

A quiet kid

Milan Credle, originally from the Washington, D.C., area, is a self-described introvert who was quiet as a kid. He finally let his inner fire out once someone starting tapping a beat on a table and asked him to sing and rap. He was 9 at the time.

“This beast came out of me,” says Credle.

He still considers himself an introvert but feels something shift in him when he’s performing.

“It’s still like that now,” Credle says. “I’m very reserved … but put me on stage, and I’m a whole different person.”

Music was a constant in Credle’s home while he was growing up, from Bob Marley to Luther Vandross to Tupac. Credle says his biggest musical influences are Marley and Bob Dylan.

He started performing for others around the age of 14 in D.C.’s go-go music scene. He sang and played drums, keyboards and bass guitar, all of which he taught himself. He started writing original music around the same time.

“I was scared of rejection,” Credle says.

Wrong crowd

When he was about 16, Credle says, he started hanging with the wrong crowd. He found himself getting into trouble but decided to leave that life behind in pursuit of a football scholarship at Millersville University. He was redshirted as a freshman due to ankle surgery.

Then he met John Caputo, of Gospel Furthering Families ministries. Caputo was the football team’s chaplain. Credle, who was not religious growing up, initially had no interest.

Caputo and his wife were persistent and got Credle to attend Bible study with the promise of food. Credle kept going back and eventually started going to church.

“That was the first time I heard about Jesus, the whole story, what He did,” Credle says.

It led to a spiritual awakening.

“(Caputo and I) had a talk, and I just broke down crying,” Credle says. “I was like, ‘I’ve been through so much, man. How do I do this?’ ”

Return to music

Around the same time that religious faith became a part of Credle’s life, he found himself returning to music. He performed at a Millersville University event in April 2011, which recharged his energy to create.

“It definitely was intertwined some type of way,” Credle says of his spiritual awakening and return to music.

He released a few self-recorded mixtapes in the following years, and briefly moved back to Washington before returning to Lancaster to raise his family. He worked in J.P. McCaskey High School’s emotional support program before taking a leave of absence.

The Lancaster Community Foundation approached Credle to rap in its “This Lanc is Your Lanc” video. The audio was recorded at the Sugar Tank recording studio, where he met engineers willing to work with him on his debut album.

“I went home and cried,” Credle says. “I was like, it’s happening. It’s happening, baby.”

Credle began collaborating with Sugar Tank engineer Lucas Gienow.

“He’s one of those people who makes you feel good,” Gienow says of Credle. “He makes you want to laugh. He makes you want to joke around with him. But he also, and it kind of comes across in his music, I think he feels a lot and he thinks a lot.”

Gienow was upfront with Credle and told him it was his first time engineering a hip-hop artist.

“He believed in me, which made me believe in him,” Gienow says.

Credle says he’s proud of the finished product, and is looking forward to a record release show that has yet to be scheduled. The album chronicles Credle’s life, including all of its hardships.

“I tried to commit suicide twice,” Credle says. “I talk about the thoughts behind that, the product of being sexually abused as a child, and how that followed me growing up and all that stuff. Trying to be something I wasn’t in the streets. And then I got songs just talking about having this huge dream … but it’s so far-fetched, because when you look at the story around you, the narrative around you, where you’re coming from, nobody gets you.”

It’s an intimate and brave undertaking for any artist, let alone on a debut full-length album. But Credle is confident every trial he has endured has a purpose.

“This stuff is going to fuel me into becoming what I know I’m destined to be,” Credle says. - Lancaster News Paper (LNP)

Milan Credle doesn’t like to sit on music for too long.

Typically, once he gets a beat he likes, the Lancaster rapper will write something, record it and share it with the world rather quickly online.

The process of making his debut album wasn’t so swift. A fire ravaged the Pequea Township apartment complex where he and his family lived after a neighbor left a lit cigarette on a balcony in March 2017. He, his wife and their children made it out unharmed, but the family lost a majority of their belongings. The fire put his plans to make an album on hold.

He went into the Sugartank recording studios the following summer, but he needed additional funds to distribute the album. So, he started an IndieGoGo campaign to crowdfund the money needed.

Now, after over a year of sitting on finished tracks, Credle is ready to share his debut album with the world.

Credle will host two events to celebrate the occasion: an intimate listening party in Tellus360’s An Sibin on Friday, and Rise Festival, a concert featuring other rap and hip-hop artists, on June 1 at the Ware Center.

“Take Me to Pluto,” a track from the debut full-length “Milan Credle Music,” soundtracks Credle’s journey to make his dreams a reality. He started working on the song in 2014 after he married Olayinka Credle, founder of Melanin Essentials, a beauty company that won Lancaster’s Great Social Enterprise Pitch in 2016.

Credle was inspired by J. Cole’s album “2014 Forest Hills Drive.” His friend made a beat with a similar vibe, and he was anxious to get to work on the song the way he always did: write lyrics, quickly record them and share it online, with little editing from his original version.

His wife, however, had other ideas.

“My wife was like, ‘Hold on. You’re not going to do this like every other song and every other project you did… No,’ ” Credle says. “She’s like, ‘You’re going to work on it. You’re going to rewrite it.”

In the song, Credle fantasizes about going to Pluto, where he can make his dreams a reality undisturbed by the complexities of Earth. Olayinka Credle saw deep value in the message, knowing others who are struggling to bring their dreams to life would be able to relate.

“The whole idea of take me to Pluto is like taking your dreams to Pluto, where they’ll never die,” Olayinka Credle says. “They’re untouched. Like he said in the song, ‘Aim for the moon and land in the stars.’ ”

Olaykina Credle, who writes poetry, pushed her husband to edit his work thoroughly and make the track the best version it could be.

At first, Credle wasn’t so open to an outside opinion in his creative process. But he is proud of the finished product, and he was excited to get the positive feedback he hoped for when he released it as a single.

“It was like, finally,” Credle says. “And then to get the feedback and the response, I’m like, thank you. I’ve been holding on to this for so long.”

He won’t have to wait much longer to share the rest of the album. A self-described introvert, Credle says a smaller debut felt right for an album with intimate subject matter about his own struggles in life.

“I’m sharing a lot of myself,” Credle says. “I wanted it to be like a family type of atmosphere.”

Credle hopes the Tellus360 event will give him the confidence he needs for the June 1 event at the Ware Center.

The Rise Festival is hosted by Driven Family, an artist collective Credle is involved in. Caribbean Wave restaurant co-owner Damain “Da Wolf” Cavalo, husband-and-wife duo Parade, and Millersville University artists the Strange and Saeso also will perform.

Credle says the event is largely possible thanks to Barry Kornhauser, assistant director of campus & community engagement, who connected him to the Ware Center.

“We want to change the narrative of the hip-hop scene in Lancaster in general, Lancaster city and the county,” Credle says. “One, some people don’t even know about it. Two, some people view it as like, dangerous or untouchable. ... We’re like, no, hip-hop is music. It’s a part of music just like any other genre.”

In addition to providing for his family, Credle’s biggest goal is that his music can make a positive difference in the lives of others.

“I want to impact and influence,” says Credle, who looks up to Bob Marley. “I don’t want stuff from other people. I’m looking like, how can I give to other people? And I know I have so much to give.” - Lancaster Newspaper

Milan Credle describes himself as an introvert, and maybe he is, but his way of dealing with any nervousness is not to be quiet and reserved; he jokes around during our interview by occasionally slipping into a British accent. "So I first moved to Lancaster [laughs] nah, I'm just kidding," he says.

Milan grew up in Washington D.C. and moved to Lancaster for college at Millersville where he played football and majored in social work. He now has a wife and kids and is set to release his debut full-length album on June 1 (iTunes, Google Play). He's not afraid to talk about his nervousness and how that plays into his performance.

"I always get nervous. But I think what helps is, what shaped me is the way I grew up. My mom...since she was the only voice raising us, she always told us, 'I don't care what you feel, I don't care what's going on in the moment, you fight.' So that tenacity in me... it's always fighting that feeling to retreat and not give it my all. So I actually use it. You can always tell how nervous I'm feeling based on how hard I'm going."

Growing up in D.C. Milan was surrounded by go-go music, a kind of subgenre of funk, R&B and hip-hop that involves live instruments. When he performed in our studio he brought along drummer Joseph Mobley and pianist Klaudellsh Larieux to perform his song "Ode to 3 (Cry)". The song talks about three people in his life that he lost.
"A good friend I grew up with, he got shot...And then a really, really close friend who I also called a brother, his brother died like ten minutes before I went on stage...Then my brother died when I was 17. There was a lot of tears and a lot of writing. So I wrote the chorus...I wanted to write it bring healing to a listener, because it brought healing for me. You know we can reminisce on good memories even though this person is gone and it's hard to move on. But all I do is think back on the good times that we had."

Struggle and how to deal with it is a theme in his music. In our studio he wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Beauty in the struggle". The word "beauty" is encircled by a red band of thorns. It's the title of one of the songs on his upcoming album. "Circumstances can be tough. Trying to live your dream and it's really hard and you're working hard it and you see nothing happening, see beauty in the that. I always picture a flower growing out of concrete. You know there's beauty in everything."

That positive attitude has carried Milan Credle through hard times and into a life of his own making. And he's taking the struggles of his past and turning them into something that can help others. - Joe Ulrich, Arts & Culture Desk and WITF Host

Milan Credle is a hip-hop/rap artist based out of Lancaster, PA. Growing up in a musical family is what led Milan to strive to be successful in a musical career. He was inspired by the likes of artist such as Bob Marley, Luther Vandross, and Tupac. It is Milan’s goal to bring a new sound to the hip-hop scene and inspire everyone to never stop chasing after their dreams. He has the passion, drive and talent to make his mark with his music. Be sure to check out his latest inspirational single “Take Me To Pluto” showcasing his radio-ready sound you will love.

Was there something (an experience) or someone in your life that was the "catalyst" for you to start writing music? Tell us about it.

Yea, my catalyst was actually the traumatic circumstances that were going on in my life at a young age and I knew I needed an outlet that was true to me in expressing the pain and anger brewing inside of me.

Let's get this out of the way. What is the CRAZIEST thing that has ever happened to you in your music career?

It's actually a funny one. I was performing at the Voltage Lounge in Philadelphia, PA and this guy, who was clearly not sober, tried to grab my mic stand from where he was in the crowd. As I'm talking into the mic, I look at him and say "Your good homie, your good", but my eyes were saying, "If you touch this mic stand or get on stage, I will put you to sleep and continue my set." Thankfully, my team pulled him aside so I could finish. We laughed a lot after that show.

What has been the high point of your music path?

I think for me the high point on my music path has been having the opportunity as of late being able to create on a consistent basis an at a high level. That was always a dream of mine and now I'm living that out. It's pretty cool for me because I always had different road blocks in the way and my music always had to be on the back burner or a hobby for me and that's not what I want to do, I want to make this my career and take care of my family.

So, how do you approach songwriting or what is your creative process like?

I approach it very strategically. Depending on the song or the mood of the song, I read poetry from Maya Angelou, or Langston Hughes and listen to songwriters like Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and the Beatles on my downtime to put me in the right mindset when I start writing. If Iv'e been reading a lot, then I just write with no music around me, just me, a pen, and lots of paper. If I've been touched by a particular sound, then the sound of the melody or harmony or overall song gives me the "vibe" when I am writing to a production piece.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Indie Artists today? Or, if you could ask the music industry to change one thing, what would it be?

If I had one thing, I would ask the music industry to not be so difficult towards indie artist. I know they are trying to make their money as well but come on now, you have all the resources and indie artist would dream of. Let the indie artist grow the way they want to grow with access to mainstream as well. Whether indie or major, music is for everybody.

If you could share the stage with one other artist or band, who would it be and why?

Man, that's tough to be honest. If he was alive, I would definitely say Bob Marley because of what he represented and the energy he brought to the stage every time. He brought a life altering/changing experience every time he hit the stage and that's what I aim to do when I hit the stage. So, it would have been nice to share that same energy with him and learn from him.

What are your rehearsals generally like? Or, how do you prepare for a live show?

I usually start my rehearsals at home with my wife and kids. I go through my set as if they were the live audience. They give me their honest critique and I tweak things to the critique. After that, I do it again with my music team, musicians and business people, and they give their critique. Lastly, I do it by myself with all the critique to see how I feel about it, then I'm ready to hit the stage.

Pick one song that was your greatest challenge to write. Tell us about it!

I think am unreleased song that I have called "Waves" was probably my biggest challenge because of the vulnerability, honesty, and transparency of it scares me because I think to myself, "The world is going to hear this, they are going to hear the side of me that no one knows but a handful of people."

What's coming up in the future?

I have my two more singles coming soon with visual content. My debut album will be coming late spring of 2018.

Where can fans can access your music.

They can go to www.milancredlemusic.com to get all the links and access to every music outlet my music is on. Also connect with me on social media @milancredle to stay updated on my releases, press, live performances, etc. - BWH Music Group

As a student from 2009-2014 at Millersville University, Milan Credle studied social work while dabbling with a passion of music on the side. Little did he know that this passion would result in a career with his first album debuting at none-other than Millersville’s Ware Center—a performing arts center in downtown Lancaster.

Credle’s rap album debut served as one portion of a community hip-hop event entitled the Rise Festival that took place on June 1. With 150-200 people in attendance, the positive vibes of this event served as a great experience for all rap and hip-hop enthusiasts.

With songs including “Waves,” “Hustle II,” “Intro,” “Focused,” “Bittersweet,” and “Take Me To Pluto,” Credle says his album details the pain and struggle he has overcome in his life.

Credle was not the only performer at the Rise Festival with ties to Millersville University. Other acts included Millersville junior and communications theatre student, Jon Saeso and previous Millersville student, Velkro LaStrange. This is no coincidence though, since LaStrange and Saeso met Credle in college.

“I wanted to give [LaStrange and Saeso] a platform to work hard and push their music the way I did, if not harder and further,” said Credle. “When I was a senior, they were freshman, with incredible talent. So with my wife and I sticking around in Lancaster, I was able to continue to build with them, and I now call them little brothers.”

LaStrange is originally from a tribe called the Madinkos in Sierra Leone, West Africa. His music channels his humble beginnings. As a tribe that believes that music is a way to heal people, LaStrange describes his vibe as “soul music” that touches people’s spirits and uplifts them.

“[The Rise Festival] was actually my first time performing in the city and it was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve had so far as an artist. I really felt one with the audience and it felt as if I was creating currents of waves in the ocean and they followed and danced along to my music,” said LaStrange.

Saeso, on the other hand, became involved with music at a young age through seeing his older brother’s interest in rap.

“I’m very unapologetic about my faith and very open about my struggles,” said Saeso. He describes his music as vulnerable, passionate and truthful.

“Milan Credle has impacted my music a lot. We’ve been friends for around six years now and he’s showed me a lot of tricks from performance, to how to master and mix, and how to build a song,” said LaStrange.

As these three artists continue their voyage in the music industry, they will look back on their time at Millersville as an essential part of their journey.

“[My education at Millersville] shaped my heart for people in general. I make music from my heart and soul to touch the people. I take all the things I’ve learned and apply it to why I make music. The content in education I got from Millersville, I believe enhances my heart because I grew in knowledge and my abilities and skills as a person,” concluded Credle. - Alyssa Mancuso

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome musician and artist Milan Credle to Harrisburg for July's Third in the Burg! Performance begins at 7pm. This event is free and open to the public!

About the Artist:

Milan Credle is a Washington D.C. native. He grew up listening to music his mother would play, from Rick James, Isley Brothers, DC's own GoGo Music, and Bob Marley to TLC, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and 2Pac.

Milan viewed music and songwriting as a hobby or form of therapy to cope with the various trials encountered early on in his life.

Two mixtapes were released by Milan Credle prior to officially starting his Rap career in 2014 with the release of his "The Abstract Of A Man" mixtape. Since then, Milan is now based in Lancaster, PA where he has been growing as an artist, with the recent release of his debut album, "Milan Credle Music". - Midtown Scholar Bookstore

Milan Credle is an ambitious Hip-Hop/Soul/R&B artist out of Lancaster, PA. Milan hopes to inspire others with his music, always delivering influential messages with each song. He is getting ready for his debut album which is to be expected in the late spring. Recently, Milan re-released his song “Summer Prayers” which was coproduced by D/errick Beats and Klaudellsh Larieux.

“Summer Prayers” kicks off with an introduction featuring layers of ambient, melodic guitar phrases as Milan hums soulfully, his voice pans back and forth. As the production gradually increases in volume, the addition of light percussion sets a soothing groove as the song progresses into the verse. With the entrance of kick and bass, Milan enters on the hook singing, “The sun will rise tomorrow /As more of my people dropping to the ground/As the heat rises/Cold bodies fallen to the floor,” shifting between singing and rapping each line blending perfectly with the mellow vibes of the production as he delivers a powerful message through his lyrics.

In “Summer Prayers,” Milan sheds light on the injustices against the African American community by not only law enforcement but also through the black on black violence that occurs. In the first verse, Milan shows off his stellar vocals through poetic lyrics that paint a vivid picture of said violence as he pleads for people to make a change. As the song progresses, the beat shifts key as Milan breaks into a rapping verse that shows off his skills as a dynamic lyricist. With clever word play, a vocal tone that soothes the ears, and a heartfelt message listeners undoubtedly connect with.

Milan is a gifted lyricist and musician with the ability to write meaningful music that can deliver a powerful message through sonically pleasing phrases that will stay with you. “Summer Prayers,” is just one inspirational song of Milan’s that will have you excited for his upcoming releases. Fans can purchase his music via Amazon. For more information on Milan, please visit his website. - BWH Music Group