Santino Le Saint, A Multi-Faceted Rockstar In The Making

For all artists, from painters, musicians, writers… there is always one ultimate goal; to become a legend. Legendary in all senses of the word, from personal relationships to creating work that is appreciated amongst peers and is here long after you are, but how do you determine who or what is a legend? They say there are three stages of death, the final stage being when your name is said for the last time, but for legends, it is a name that never dies. For many of us, those legends are hard to find, especially when trying to pave a way for yourself that seems to be a road rarely taken.

Santino Le Saint, a name to remember as he closes the chapter on his most exciting year yet. His Jordan year (turning 24 in January 2022), the release of his debut album, ‘Beautiful Disaster’, and preparation for his highly anticipated European Tour.

The first time I and many more had been catapulted into the world of Santino Le Saint, was at Cloud X festival, strolling onto the stage ready to perform, sunglasses on with a bottle of Henny in hand. Something out of a biopic for a Rockstar, which is not out of the ordinary as he is regularly compared to the late Jimi Hendrix for his immaculate guitar skills. Though Santino has his feet firm on the ground with a growing fanbase and a hunger for his next move, everything he is today has been years in the making.

Born in South London, to a musically inclined family, his dad being Charlie Parker from the British hip-hop group The 57th Dynasty, everything Santino has done has had 100% all his effort. From the age of 12, Santino wrote his first-ever songs, something that was kept with him until he turned 16, and began covering tracks by The Weeknd and PARTYNEXTDOOR, uploading them to Sound Cloud. All his work, from covers to his debut album, has had hours of work put in with a clear direction of what he wants to present to the world.

A guitar enthusiast, art, and basketball lover, there are so many avenues that lead to where he is today. A Ravensbourne graduate in Graphic Design, Santino is a part of it all, designing all his cover art, excluding his debut album which was designed by tjohnatan, he also wants to begin working within that field too on external projects.

Up next though, is the perfect celebration to a year and a half of dedication to a debut album, a tour. A Beautiful Disaster tour starting in April 2022, sees Santino on tour with his band for a series of dates in the UK and Europe, tickets on sale now.

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The first time I saw you live was at Cloud X festival, you strolled onto the stage with a bottle of Hennessey…

Hahaha, I definitely love my drink…

I can slyly tell! Why did the bottle make an appearance with you?

Honest truth?

100%…

I was already tipsy, and I didn’t want to leave the bottle behind ha-ha. So, I thought I’d enjoy the moment, have a little sip here and there between my sets instead of just pouring it into a cup.

You looked so cool…

I was too comfortable with it, I needed it… Nah I’m joking but I do love a bit of whiskey and performing.

Your debut album is out! How are you feeling?

I’m fine…It’s been good! Just super busy at the moment. It’s a weird one, my friends and people who work with me make jokes about how I don’t get too gassed or excited when these things happen, I don’t think I’m an enthusiastic guy, but I’m gassed.

So, now the album is out, you said you spent months researching and preparing for it, during lockdown specifically. What do you want your listeners to take from it and what do you want them to have learned about you?

I want people to understand that the music I make will never be able to be confined to a genre. I’m not caged into anything and I feel like, with that, people automatically think you are on some crazy experimental sh*t. But I want people to know that I will always make whatever feels right for me, and will always spend time and care about the storytelling side of things too. At this stage for me, I am going down into the rock/RnB stuff. That might change and people should strap up for that!

As far as this album, I want people to take in the story from songs 2 to 11, there is a loose chronological, love story. The conclusion is that the two people who are together, are a beautiful disaster. I know of want people to listen to it and understand that just because things may be chaotic, doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in it. To me, it symbolises the perfection of imperfection.

What in your life would you describe as a ‘beautiful disaster’?

Everything! That’s the whole reason I wanted it to be called this… In all beautiful ways possible, there are so many things in life that are beautiful disasters. I don’t believe in perfection, but imperfect things are perfect if that makes sense.

Speaking going down the rock/R&B route, what helped you decide that’s where you wanted to take this?

I grew up listening to a lot of rock music, out of my own choice once I started playing guitar. I started playing guitar then I had that influence, I don’t think that will ever go away because, at the core of who I am, I’m a guitarist. It was really simple for me to make that decision for my debut album, to go with what has always influenced me and I wanted to push it a bit further from the stuff I’ve done before.

So, it’s been said that you can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix and that your MO is to make younger kids see you and want to pick up a guitar, what is it about a guitar that is so special to you and to your music trajectory?

Nowadays, there is a lack of instrumentation in music even though it is the core of making music. I think most people are in a place where they want to make new sounds and new music. I just want to bring back music in a way that is done properly. People add guitar without actually thinking what it’s there for. I want to be a black individual who can play guitar, that is not corny and just normal.

I mentioned Jimi Hendrix but was there anyone in this generation that inspired you how you want to impact younger generations?

Not really. I think that is why I am trying to do it. I don’t know anyone that ticks off all those boxes for me. I don’t know any guitar hero that is a person of colour…

How do you navigate that space then, trying to be something you didn’t have?

I don’t think about it too much, I just have to keep doing what I’m doing. If I’m doing it right, then the aspect of inspiring others should happen naturally. And that’s where the PR’s come in and stuff, just helping to push my narrative. If I thought about it too much I’d get sidetracked.

You’ve said in a past interview that you want to be the biggest artist in the world, what does that look like for you?

You know what, my drive isn’t to be that so I don’t know why I said it haha… that’s not how I view it from my heart, so maybe my opinion has changed since then. I want to be successful and leave a huge legacy, but if I cared about just getting to the top, I wouldn’t make the music I do right now.

You can see that with how much you do and a part of – you’re a co-founder of Cloud X, you’re a semi-pro basketballer and BMXer, you play guitar amongst other things… what does your legacy look like for in this moment?

My goal at the moment is to be able to create and change things, I want to be recognised as great in exactly what I do and nothing else. But I also just want to live sustainably from music and provide generational wealth to all my kids and grandkids and all those things to come, so they all go hand in hand.

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You have always wanted to be an artist that has complete creative control, so what are the feelings you go through when you finalise a project?

I found that a lot of artists always have a hard time finishing stuff because of getting a project perfect. But I make so much music and so much different music that I have taught myself to actually know when something is really done and be able to get everything out of it. with an album it is harder, you make 20 contenders that you have to cut down to 12, then you have 100 ideas on how to do certain things, and then only choose a few from that. But I think I am quite diligent and ruthless when deciding those things.

So, I did just sit down and pick which ones make the best story, and what I wanted to do with this album was make a chronological story with enough hits; enough upbeat ones, and downbeat ones. This was the way I wanted to do it, then sign it off and move on. – It is a strict way to look at it…

Yeah, it’s strict, sometimes you speak to artists, and the finality of it all is the most emotional part.

You have to separate that sometimes though, even for this album I started making it in February 2020. From Feb to finishing it in March/April this year, I spent all that time being emotional about it. From writing in the studio to talking to my friends about it, reading, and watching stuff. Then when it comes to finishing it after the writing process the only thing to do is leave that emotion behind.

You talk about love a lot, in all its different aspects, what does love mean to you and how has it been treating you, to sum up?

Jesus, there are not enough hours in the day to talk about that one.

We’re all suffering together…

Honestly… Love is… treating me fine at the moment. What does it mean? What does love mean to me? Wow, that’s too big of a question! The reason I enjoy writing about love so much is that I think it is one of the most confusing yet intense emotions. It is something that you don’t know until you feel it, and you can feel it in a million different ways; whether it’s family, relationships, friends, the things you have. I am just super fascinated by it and I always have been. I am a romantic guy, some may say. But I am also interested in writing about the dark sides of love, the things that people feel that don’t like talking about. The more savage parts to it. Not the soft bits of love.

Sometimes that darker side of love is more real than the soft side presented in movies and stuff.

Exactly. The real side is the pain of it, and that is what I want to talk about. I think the thing with writing is, I talk to the people around me and I get asked, what is that song about? Is it about me or this person… and I’m like everything I write about it from a real-life experience but it doesn’t mean that every single story I’ve told in detail is exactly what I’ve been through. At the end of the day, it is a monetised version of an event. You’re taking eight lines in a verse and chorus and telling a story in three minutes; it has to be dramatic and condensed. A lot of the time I’d get like one line from a film or someone will text me a line, and they’ll see me write it down in my notes. Then, I’ll go home and build a whole world around that and throw relatable bits from my life into it.

I can’t lie, when I first listened to ‘Hurricane’, I nearly cried…

Bare people were sending me videos of them crying! But I’m glad it’s a good sign of what my song was supposed to do!

You released ‘Ride Or Die’ and ‘Hurricane’ together, both are soooo different. Why did you release both tracks at the same time and before the album release?

We planned to roll out five singles before the album, so they were the last two to come. Unfortunately, this is kind of where I want to get to, I don’t have the ability to drop 12 songs at once out of the middle of nowhere and they all get the love they deserve. I’m not Kanye yet… so we did that to kind of let people get involved, press, fans, etc. so it’s a better way of getting all songs taken in properly.

I’m not sure why we did those two together when we decided the first rollout was the last song on the album, ‘Love Drugs, Anarchy’ which was upbeat. Then we put out the intro of the album, and then a soft one, etc, so I guess, myself and the team wanted to show all the different dimensions of the album and not give anything away.

I honestly see that with this album, ‘Hurricane’ was just one of those songs…

It was definitely one of my favourites that I’ve ever written.

Really? It must be crazy when people say this to you though? Maybe the crying vids are a bit much… but how do you feel?

It’s a weird one for me, because a lot of people receive compliments and it gasses them, I love when people love my stuff so much!! But I never trip off it. I don’t know how to explain because I don’t want to sound ungrateful towards anything, but I think I am just very real about things. I like to know what they liked about the song, their favourite bit of it and talking about it like that.

This might be a weird question, but do you realise that it’s YOUR music like you did that? Sometimes I feel like it can be a bit surreal creating and loving something that is also loved by so many others.

I don’t know you know… I think that is it, especially with music in general, I’ve spent my whole life in music and there is some surreal element and kind of disconnected from you. I find like looking at my stuff on Spotify like that’s me, I’m an artist, I live and breathe this… it’s weird sometimes. You know what I mean right?

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You do come from a musical lineage, with your dad being Charlie Parker from the British hip-hop group The 57th Dynasty, does he have any input in what you’re doing now?

It’s funny because a lot of people ask me about how I can write some of the stuff I do and how my parents listen to it, my dad doesn’t really care he loves it. but my mum is a harder critic, she doesn’t like that I swear, drink and smoke and I’m like “mum, I’m a Rockstar!” and she’s like, no. She slowly gets it, the more the number goes up the more she likes it.

My dad has always been involved, he taught me to produce and gave me a guitar, so anytime I used to make songs I’d always go back to him, like can you mix this for me, can you tell me what you think of this hook and stuff. He also understands the creative process really deeply because of his musical background and how many instruments he’s played. He kind of left me to it as well, nowadays he is always telling me to continue to progress the musicality in my projects and that’s how you get longevity.

What do you want to pass on to your children?

I think if I could be exactly how my parents were to me, that’s what I’d want. They didn’t have everything, and they separated but they’re really good friends, I’ve always enjoyed the dynamic of going to two different houses and enjoying separate time with them. They always let me do what I wanted in a sense where, if I wanted to play football, my dad would be like “cool, but put 120% into it” and he’d actually like make me put 120% into it. I’d want to do the same. 

You come across as someone courageous in your journey, what would you say you’re most scared of?

Spiders. I hate them but I’m getting better. In life though; living a life that I didn’t want or wasn’t true to myself.

How do you work towards that daily?

Wake up and do what I want. Not in the sense where it’s like “fuck everyone, I’m going to do dumb shit today” but in a way that I make music that is true to myself, I make time for my friends and family no matter what. If I just want to paint for the day I will, which I have the ability for now. It is just about a way of life for me, I don’t want to be doing anything that I don’t enjoy. We’ve all done that at one point in our lives if not all our lives, so I just want to make sure I do what I need to do.

That is my biggest fear as well, and big-up to all the generations before us that had to do that because of life. Our generation gets to have more of a choice.

Yeah, they had it harder! It’s so true we’re super lucky.

What kind of kid were you in school?

What kind of kid do you think I was?

Trouble… but also really studious?

I was the popular kid lol, until college. I was rebellious but I was smart because I knew how to get away with stuff. I was friends with teachers, so I didn’t get in trouble as much as the other kids… man’s smart you know ha-ha! I was studious but on the creative side, I was away with the fairies a lot. then in college, I realised how lame all the popular stuff was and just locked myself in the studio.

You’re only 23, the same as myself, I feel like this is a really weird age. It’s like you’re in the stage of your adolescence ending while already being an adult, so many changes…

It’s booky init! Like I’m paying bills and stuff but also I’m poor and shit…

Literally, paying bills and at the same time, I want to go on stage with a bottle of Henny…

Listen, you’re never too old to get on stage with a bottle of Henny!

Damn right! It’s just a weird age to navigate, your early twenties are a rollercoaster. How have you found your 23rd year? Your Jordan year as well!

Jheeze! I don’t know man, it’s weird but I am a weird guy I always feel slightly disconnected from things. I’m always thinking about big things and as I’ve got older and make more music that becomes more apparent. So, 23 is cool but it’s interesting because you’re no longer a kid. So, you act on things in a different way, I want to try and make a book, paint and read more, which are things that if I told myself at 21, I’d do, I’d think you were lying. So, I can feel my transition…

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Catch Santino The Saint at the following UK shows:

April 
17 Bristol Rough Trade
18 Nottingham Bodega
19 London Hackney EartH
20 Manchester YES
21 Leeds Headrow House

Words: Hiba Hassan

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