A guilty pleasure of mine is watching the Voice auditions from across the world. I especially like the Norway and Australia shows because of the variety of songs and typically great voices. The winner of Australia 2026 is an indigenous rapper who goes by Yung Milla. He auditioned with a rap written by his brother and it was an amazing performance. It was so good, the judges asked his brother to join him and perform it again. Yung Milla and his brother work with youth to help them find hope.
That rap had all the hallmarks of good rap music. Power, lyrics that speak to the community Yung Milla comes from, and commentary on society. As he moved through the competition, Melania C (of the Spice Girls) had him perform Collio, Kendrick Lamar, and others, but for the semi-final she asked Yung Milla to write his own rap using the Men at Work Song Down Under as a base. Risky? Yes, but oh so worth it. Here is that performance.
The choir, the rap, and the performance are amazing. But even more powerfully is the way that Yung Milla takes a familiar song and turns it on its head. He leans into the commentary of the original, but gives it a darker turn “where men plunder” becomes about more than overdevelopment. It becomes a refrain about the oppression and prejudice directed at the indigenous Australians who have the longest continuous culture in the world dating back at least 35,000 years.
“I’m not complaining with the cards I’ve been dealt with, But it’s hard when they looking at my skin thinking I’m trouble.”
It is the cry of strength in the face of prejudice and fear. The strength to recognize how others see, but saying this will not break me. Verse two is extends this and brings powerful language and turns.
Yeah, we come up from the dirt where the pain don’t fade. We all trying to find light in a world so gray. Tell me how do we have hope in a place with no faith? Possibility of death coming to you every day. All the struggle that we had only a few can relate. Being raised up in a home knowing that it ain’t safe. I’m giving everything I got, pouring out my heart on the stage. And they asking where I’m from, all I got to say...
I come from a land down under
“How do we have hope in a place with no faith?” What a cry of lament. But also a cry of resistance to the descent into hopelessness. Yung Milla shouts that he gives his everything on the stage. While he rapped 2Pac in the final, I believe that the semi-final performance won the competition for Yung Milla. His humility and joy at performing and being on a huge stage is an inspiration for hope in a time of hopelessness. It is the hope of a new and better world in which fear and hate are not the primary means of human interaction. Let us learn from Yung Milla.
Here’s the audition video. There was a hook this year in Australia where Tones and I was a secret judge who gave some singers who got no chair turn an opportunity to audition again after coaching which is why you see her briefly.