SantinoMusic

You may not have heard about him yet, but this 22-year-old Rochester, N.Y. native known as Santino (real name: Brandon Hernandez) has been making a name for himself as a one-man musical force on the St. Petersburg, Florida scene. A stylish young phenom, Santino effortlessly combines old school soul with up-to-the-minute hip-hop and coolly polished R&B. You can hear his unique sound in the B4 gospel organ wash and synthesizers at the start of his first single for Tom Graham’s indie label S...

You may not have heard about him yet, but this 22-year-old Rochester, N.Y. native known as Santino (real name: Brandon Hernandez) has been making a name for himself as a one-man musical force on the St. Petersburg, Florida scene. A stylish young phenom, Santino effortlessly combines old school soul with up-to-the-minute hip-hop and coolly polished R&B. You can hear his unique sound in the B4 gospel organ wash and synthesizers at the start of his first single for Tom Graham’s indie label Seven Star Records. “My Girl,” features a sensuous hook with playful beats that takes you back to Michael Jackson in his Off the Wall heyday. “I got that keyboard part from Class Act; the first Kid n’ Play movie,” says Santino, who sings, raps as well as plays guitar, keys, drums and synths. “This old song was playing during one scene. I just sat down and recreated it. I had the beat in around 20 minutes, but it took me two months to come up with words for it.” Santino’s style is one of a kind. He uses his near perfect pitch ear to perfect his sound. “Usually, I don’t like to write anything down. I just press record and freestyle and, if it doesn’t sound right, I’ll edit, chop it up and keep doing it over until I memorize it,” he explained. Santino grew up listening to all kinds of music. His mother and father turned him on to the Beatles and Stevie Ray Vaughn, he then enhanced his musical education with Motown, Michael Jackson, Prince, Earth, Wind & Fire and Ray Charles. “Both sides of my family were all about music,” he said. “They are my biggest influence.” By the time he was seven years old, Santino knew what he wanted to do with his life and thankfully a guitar was close at hand. He played in a series of bands during his years at middle school and high school warming the hearts of many fans in his often frigid native upstate city of Rochester, New York. As his music horizons widened, he began listening to the intricacies of other musical masters like punk rockers Green Day, Limp Bizkit, Blink 182, and Korn and then quickly moved on to sky-rockers like Sublime, Allman Brothers and Bob Marley, before he elevated to hip-hop listening to Little Wayne, Wu Tang Clan, Biggie, Mobb Deep, Eminem, Jay-Z, and Kanye West. “When I first heard [Kanye’s] ‘Through the Wire,’ it made me realize, that’s what I wanted to do, too,” he says. Working out of the home studio in his bedroom, Santino is a one-man band, running a highly successful online site, SantinoProductions.com, in which he “leases” his own collection of beats and hooks on a non-exclusive basis. He has also recorded a number of songs, which can be found on his well-traveled MySpace site, www.myspace.com/santino727, this site is where Santino connects with aspiring artists and creates music for them on a daily basis. “A Dedication” is Santino’s cover of Marley’s “Waiting in Vain,” while in “I Wanna Love Ya,” Santino takes a sample of Bob’s “Is This Love,” chops it up, puts a new beat behind it and adds his own background vocals. “I hope to get back into a recording studio as quickly as possible to start working on the full album,” he says, citing such workaholics as Lil Wayne and Tallahassee’s T-Pain as inspirations. As for his name, Santino explains. “When I was born, my father wanted to name me Santino after the character in The Godfather movie. My mom opted for Andre, a dear friend of my parents named me Brandon and somehow it stuck.” So Brandon it was. But Brandon now knows that he was born to be Santino, a name he says fits him; smooth, sensual, very deep, very cool. With his first single about to drop, and various promotional appearances ready to be scheduled, Santino is ready to take his act live. He has already performed on the same tickets with national recording artists such as “Plies”, “2 Pistols”, “Lil Boosie”, and a host of other top charting hip hop artist. “The most important thing for me is to get in people’s faces,” he says. And he doesn’t apologize for his unabashed sex appeal, either. Get ready for Santino, folks. He’s more than ready for you.