Cruel Santino’s ability to craft eccentric, detailed and enticing worlds to endlessly explore has made him one of the most exciting and unpredictable artists of our generation.
The Lagos native works effortlessly to ensure he creates a truly unrepeatable experience from top to bottom on his projects and that’s most certainly the case on his sophomore album, ‘Subaru Boys: FINAL HEAVEN’. Santi has taken more creative risks than ever which thankfully pay off to create one of the most fulfilling listening experiences you’re likely to have this year.
Released three years after his heavily praised debut, ‘Mandy & The Jungle’, Santino’s hiatus was certainly more than worth it. “I feel like I had to take some time off because I wasn’t satisfied with what I was hearing and what I was making; I mean, the songs were good but I felt like each of my projects I had kind of grown out of and evolved.”
“It’s so crazy because I made ‘Mandy & The Jungle’ two years before it dropped so when it dropped, I had kind of moved passed it. That album is what brought me to more people so I feel like half of me was still trying to make something that people could relate to, like Mandy and not treat the side of me that wanted to grow.”
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You seem to reinvent yourself in a way on each of your projects, is starting from the ground up and doing something completely new something you feel like you have to do to keep things fresh and exciting?
There was just a point when I went to my friend's house because there’s this thing we do where we won’t see each other for months and then when we do, we just play each other our songs and catch up. When I hear his music, I know he’s going to blow my mind and when he hears mine, I'm going to blow his mind so that was our form of connection.
When I went to his house, he played me songs and my mind was blown because I'd never heard sounds like that and I'd played him my music and he was impressed… but his mind wasn’t blown, he could tell I was making safe music. There was a sense of comfort that he had that money or fame couldn’t give you, he had that satisfaction of knowing what he made was crazy so it just made me rethink everything. I scrapped the first project I made and I just went back to the ground again and built Subaru up.
Were you nervous about releasing ‘Subaru Boys’? Especially as you were no longer making what you considered to be safe music?
Yeah, I can’t lie I was kind of nervous about that. The thing is I still want to make hits, I still want songs that can be played on the radio and can be listened to by old, young every age group can jam my songs and be like this is crazy. In the past I went deeper into music and I just found out there’s so many layers to it. Even when you play video games and it says “now loading” – there’s a song there or a sound there to help guide you and help your subconscious to actually wait for the game while it loads.
There’s so much to music and I just saw it as one big matrix and I was just like I'm going to combine everything together because there’s so much you can do with music. You can heal with music, make people cry, make them escape and make them dance so it’s just you getting all the layers of it in your mind and transferring it into feeling.
You mentioned video games and I saw that you tweeted about how you’re treating the album like a video game, having constant updates, character reveals, new music and videos, how did the idea for that come about? Are video games something you take a lot of inspiration from?
Yeah so, it’s going to keep updating. I’m inspired by Hideo Kojima, there’s a way his games feel that just feel like more than a game. There’s just a way he makes the world in his games. When I was making my album, I wanted it to feel like more than an album like it could even be a game, a world you could escape to. Gaming is very key to my craft. When I was making Subaru, I started to actually study a lot more about gaming so it kind of just synced with the album. I was making songs that could be in a game or sound like a game.
You’ve created a variety of different characters that represent parts of the album and there’s going to be even more, how did that idea all come together?
So, there’s a process I go through to create my music and why it has its own feeling, it’s like trying to create a movie and the soundtrack for it. I love anime – my whole body is tatted with my favourite characters and I feel like just wanted to make to my own anime so I thought let me just try to make the soundtrack to my own anime. I started doing research on what I'd want in this world and I don’t know why but I started to get interested in snowboarding and I can’t even remember what got me interested in the sea but in my head, I just had a story about a bunch of seaboarders who work for the government and carry out the government's dirty work and they are called the Subaru Boys and that’s how it came in my head.
This is all the foundation of me trying to set up my own anime and the first step to it is the soundtrack then I will build up the characters and the story. On the first song it starts with Brazy talking then it goes to a radio reporter saying “there has been a bombing in the sea ministry” and the second song is a voice terminal telling you “Good morning sea humans and sea creatures” so it’s all part of a world I'm trying to build. That’s why I'm saying I'm trying to treat it like a game because when you play a game the first part comes out then two months later there’s a patch and because of the world I’m trying to build, this could take me so many years to complete, making a manga, making an anime, that’s going to take you years.
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You’re a very fluid artist, you’re not afraid to take risks and go into different genres even more so on this album, do you spend a lot of time trying to perfect and study these different musical styles or does it just come naturally to you?
That’s always been me from the get-go even with Suzie and Mandy. Suzie is playful experimentation; Mandy is safe experimentation and Subaru is just growth and full-on experimentation. I feel like because of how much I consumed while I was growing up, I couldn't stick to one genre. When you’re growing up you didn’t have the leisure of choosing what you listen to, I'd play video games and would hear indie songs, I'd go on Disney and I'd hear rock then when I'm with my parents I'd hear 80’s or 90’s stuff.
I spent a lot of time by myself so music was like a toy for me – I would hear it and I wouldn’t even care what I was listening to, I would listen till the end and listen to all of the tracks I didn’t even care that I'd be listening to everything. That all just combined into my brain and made me not stick to one genre. I grew up on Owl City, Santigold, and Nigerian street music so there was just too much in my subconscious to just stick to one thing.
With your creative process when coming up with melodies or lyrics do you like to write, freestyle or a bit of both?
To be honest with you I still write but everything comes from my head, I still write my scripts and stories but when it comes to music, I've just realised that life is too fast-paced now.
When it comes to singing you might sing something and never be able to sing something again because you’ve lost the feeling at that moment. You can never replicate the feeling of something you just sang, it’s not possible. Most times I just sing off the top of my head… because I make music daily, I know how to write songs off the top of my head. I do still write but the feeling is very important so it’s best to do it there and then.
There was a time in London they kicked me out of my AirBNB – I think I had two days left and I was so sad and I had this song to make… I knew I had to record it the day I was getting kicked out because I was sad and I wouldn’t get that exact feeling again.
Speaking of London, you’ve got Skepta on the project. What’s your relationship like with him and how did you start making music together?
That was a full-circle moment for me. I didn’t meet Skep until he came for homecoming and when I met him, he heard me perform and was like “yo your stuff is crazy”. I didn’t know if I was ever going to meet him again so I just said to him “yo my name is Santi I shoot videos” and he was like “yeah cool cool sure” and in three days they called me to perform at Skepta's private homecoming party and said I should open for him so I was like “wow that’s insane”. I did that and the next year homecoming became a show and for each homecoming I was a part of it. That was what first linked me to Skep all because he saw me and liked my music.
When it came to making my album, the song with Skep has that streets, FIFA 05 sound so I was like okay let me send that to Skep. At first, I was nervous because on the song there’s a part where I have a British accent so I thought Skep would be like “What are you doing man…” but he heard it and said he’d send his verse the next day. It’s crazy because I've never heard Skepta rap and sing like that so hearing that was too crazy for me. It was full circle.
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What would you say is the proudest moment in your career so far would it be Subaru Boys or something earlier on?
I think there are a lot of things; this album, performing at Flog Gnaw, directing the Goldlink and Tyler video. Where I'm coming from, I actually did this all just from making songs in my bedroom. People tried to tell me this wasn’t possible and the rest of your country is just making one sound but me coming up with my own sound, own visuals, editing and directing by myself and being in a space where I can make stuff for other big people is really crazy to me.
'Subaru' is really important to me, I'm in a position where I can create more things now. There are talks about me creating an anime, there’s talks about making a game I feel like I have to take those risks because if I just kept making ‘Mandy & The Jungle’ and being safe people wouldn’t know this much about me and I would be suffering internally.
How would you say the Nigerian music scene has progressed since you were first coming up?
Because of everyone taking risks and the spread of the main sound to the world, I feel like it’s in a very crazy and beautiful place. Nobody has control over the music, even with Tik-Tok it’s not in the power of the corporations. It’s just in a space wherein two or three years there could be a rap song from Nigeria that could go number one or a rock song that could go number one. You could see girls who are inspired by Pinkpantheress come out of Nigeria and be that big too, it’s no longer in the power of the people who decide what type of music to give us.
Are you planning on going on tour for the album?
Definitely. Quarantine and Covid really messed everything up I had at least 20 shows lined up. There was even one at the Frauenfeld festival and on my day, it was just me, Brockhampton, Thug and Uzi I was like this is going to be the most epic thing ever. Then Covid happened and everything got cancelled so I was pretty bummed. Now that I've dropped this album, I'm about to perform everywhere I can. I’m going to do a Subaru tour in Europe, I'm going To go to the states, even going To try and go to Tokyo as well as go to high schools and Uni’s here.
Are your performances something you like to take seriously and put a lot of effort and planning into?
Yep, I feel like naturally I know how to perform because I know how to act and I'm naturally very dramatic so there’s just a joy of allowing people to feel what you’re feeling I think that’s a gift and if you can always do that you’ll do really well. Performances are something that people take seriously but others actually see the glitch in it that can change someone's life so I feel like that is where I'm going with my performances.
You mentioned travelling to Europe and Tokyo, what’s one place that resonates with you that you’d love to live in or visit?
Definitely Tokyo, if I go, I'm not coming back! That’s my dream place to go to because I'm inspired by and grew up on a lot of their culture so just to be there and see stuff I've always seen on TV or read about would be great.
What are your plans for the rest of 2022, obviously you’ll be touring for the album and continuing to work on that but is anything else big coming up for you?
It’s a surprise! I have to keep it under wraps but I’ve never done what I'm about to do in my career… I feel like my fans will be very happy!
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‘Subaru Boys: FINAL HEAVEN’ is out now.
Words: Chris Saunders
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