Russ has been teasing the release of his new album SANTIAGO for months now and told fans that it’s unlike something he’s done before.
Tonight, the Atlanta based rapper, singer and producer has dropped his 4th album which features 13 tracks in total. The project is quite personal as Russ raps and sings about his personal struggles, family issues, mental health, insecurities, money and alcohol among other things across the album’s length.
“It feels like this is my debut album. In a sense, it is. This version of myself has never been heard. You know? I think it’s woken me up to what’s been going on internally and at least I now am aware of what’s been going on, and I have tools and resources and help to try to figure out and how to manage what’s going on. It gave me a lighthouse. And at this point, even though it is art and there is a distance from myself a little bit, but I think my goal is to merge what’s going on internally with the music seamlessly, so that they just go hand in hand. It’s like the creative side of me was always the part of me that would come downstairs and make sense of everything that was going on in my personal life,” he told Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
He particularly spoke on the song ‘Fraud’, saying, “I think by nature, I kind of talk about it on “Fraud” where for a long time, starting in my childhood, I got my identity from helping and making sure everyone else was good. And then when you inevitably can’t save everyone, it’s a threat to who you are. And I crumbled when that happened. I always felt so emotionally responsible for everyone. And I felt like it was on me to make sure my mom was good and my brother and my sister.”
There are some features on the album but they are hidden for now. Listen to the full album below.