Shortly before her 24th birthday last January, Flo Milli got an unexpected gift from her fans. After playing dress-up one night in her bedroom, the Alabama upstart posted an Instagram video of herself singing to her new record, “Never Lose Me.” Though she made the video in jest, the results were golden, as the clip went viral, leading to the biggest hit of Flo’s career.
“I saw it spreading before my birthday [in January], maybe months before that,” remembers Flo. “It was crazy, because I was promoting another song, but all that was on my mind was [“Never Lose Me”]. One day, I was at the house, and I made a video on my phone and posted it on Instagram. I was like, “Oh, they’re f–king with it.” Then, I put it on TikTok, and people started making videos immediately. It started getting bigger a few months after that.”
The success of “Never Lose Me” wasn’t originally on Flo’s birthday wish list, but the record has since peaked to No. 18 on the Hot 100, a career best. What started as an impromptu freestyle over Babyface Ray and 42 Dugg’s “Ron Artest” beat morphed into a sugary pop-rap bounce, courtesy of Flo’s entrancing hook and cheeky lyrics about staying close to her beau.
“I was in the studio all night, and I wasn’t really focused,” says Flo. “I was working on other stuff for my project, and then right when I was about to leave, I asked the engineer to pull up this beat — that’s when I started rapping. For the ‘Never Lose Me’ part, I’m such a perfectionist: Until I get a line right and it sounds like how it sounds in my head, I’ll do it so many times. I just kept saying, ‘You never wanna lose me.’ I wasn’t expecting it to blow. I was just doing it for me.”
Released last December, “Never Lose Me” soared into the TikTok sphere and dominated. The song topped the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart for four weeks, becoming the longest reign yet for any track. The record’s remixes featuring Bryson Tiller and Lil Yachty also helped its growth, with both stars fanning over the song before its explosion.
“It wasn’t really planned; Yachty had reached out — he told me he loved it and we started communicating on that end,” says Flo. “I sent it to Bryson. That happened because he was hitting me on DMs [before it was officially out], like, “Drop this shit. This song has been in my head.” I was like, “You should put a little verse on it,” and that’s how that came about.
Despite those wins, Flo has one more trick under her sleeves: unleashing a third remix, this one with R&B and pop superstar SZA.
“I can’t give a date on [the SZA remix] right now but hopefully soon. I’ve been talking to SZA for a couple of years — she’s always been supportive towards my career, even behind the scenes.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
