Nolan Santo is a third-year English major whose energetic flow can liven up any party. He’s primarily a rapper, but he likes to mix it up a little bit by adding in R&B sounds and melody. While New Paltz is teeming with indie bands, solo rock artists and funk rock jam bands, Santo differentiates from the rest with his unique rap style and independence.
He’s been making music since he was 12 years old, and recording in the basement of his friend’s house to make music for fun. Once in college, things really got into gear and he began to record professionally his freshman year of college. Brian Temme, a sound engineer he met from east Long Island, helped get him into the recording world and they’ve been working together ever since.
In September 2018, he actually had a full album ready to go, but scrapped the whole project because it didn’t fully capture what he wanted. From there, the creative juices were flowing so he got himself a microphone to record for himself and he produced 50 songs. He plucked out his favorite ones, and released his first album, Saints World. Saints World was released early in April 2019 and its title is based off of his last name “Santo” which translates to saint. His goal with the album was to be versatile, so there’s elements throughout it where Santo is melodic rapping, rapping and even singing.
One of his proudest accomplishments comes from his song “Bluffin,” because it is about to hit 500,000 streams on Spotify. He worked hard creating this song with OnCue, who’s an underground artist he’d admired for a long time. He takes pride in how much this song blew up.
When he started, he looked up to rappers like Eminem, 50 Cent and Dr. Dre. As he grew and developed though, his influences shifted over to artists like Drake and more underground artists.
Santo plans to start releasing more singles. After creating an entire body of work with Saints World, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. He wants to have more constant releases now that his name is out there and people are awaiting new music.
Santo embraces what sets him apart from the rest, and emphasizes being himself in his music. He’s performed at a few house shows, and his music can be found on all streaming services like Spotify, Soundcloud and Apple Music as well as Youtube under his name Nolan Santo. Check out his instagram @nolansantomusic to keep up with his new music!
