His video is off, and still Saucy Santana’s energy is infectious. Oozing from his every dramatically emphasized, Florrrda-accented word is the larger-than-life personality that makes his music the global sensation it is today. Initially coming into prominence through viral clips of funny moments—roast sessions on Instagram Live with close friend Yung Miami of the City Girls, Nicki references in a bob wig—the 28-year-old has a kind of genius for comic timing and memorable lines, a skill that has made his transition from meme sensation to music giant seamless. Who hasn’t used “material gworl” (the addictive hook to his bad-bitch super-hit) as a caption or soundtrack? Matter-of-factly Santana explains to Vogue that “when I talk, people listen. When I say things, they go viral. People want to repeat ’em, people want to act like me, you know?”
And it is a matter of fact. But still, there is only one Santana. A rap star with a full face of make-up and full beard, curves in skin-tight dresses and super-sized lashes: There is no precedent or peer. In the still-straight-male-dominated genre, not one historically hospitable to queer men, Santana has claimed his unabashedly femme, flamboyant place. It is a singular, revolutionary act, but he breaks the entirely new ground in his casual, incidental way.
With Lil Nas X, his position represents a paradigm shift, and together, they recently recorded “a fun twerk track for the summertime,” a milestone moment in which two of the biggest stars shaping rap are gay men that express their queerness in a carefree way. “It’s gonna be explosive, and it’s gonna be good for our community and just for the world, period.” They have many shared traits: both Southern (the track is called “Down Souf Hoes”) prolific meme generators, and funny internet heroes, but unlike Nas’s tongue-in-cheek but primarily self-reflective rap, Santana is more “loud, ratchet,” as he puts it.
Think brash, witty, luxury-lifestyle lines that name-check Chanel boots and Gucci sweaters, more in the lineage of his friends the City Girls, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B. “Opposites attract,” he says of Nas. Another opposite, indicative of the sea-change figures like Lil Nas X have helped to usher in, is that while he came out at the height of “Old Town Road” mania, stunning a part-cheering, part-furious world, Saucy Santana has always been visibly queer. “Even just growing up, I always got the jokes like, ‘Why you talk like a girl? Why you walking like that? Why you act like that?’”
For all the latest fasion News Click Here
