This week sees the first posthumous release from Toronto rapper King Reign, who passed away last June following a heart attack. The Valentines Day-appropriate Santa Romeo was originally recorded in the early 2000s and is being released to streaming sites on Tuesday (February 14) as a one-off single. However, the song will eventually be part of a larger project and related documentary.
In an email, producer Darp Malone described working on the song with Reign and singer/multi-instrumentalist Ivana Santilli:
The way King Reign tells the story is so visual that you cant help but come up with crazy musical ideas to compliment his flow. I had the bass line and keyboard riff in mind and I had this hi-hat lying around, and while I was laying down the drum track, Reign was playing along on the hi-hats. It sounded good so we just flew it in. I had this trumpet hook in mind that I was playing, but it wasnt sounding right with the keyboard sounds. We wanted big, live-sounding brass and we felt like Ivana Santilli would be the perfect fit. She obliged. She came through one evening played the hook and also came up with the trumpet riff for the verses.
Malone says the love-story scenario described in the lyrics is typical of Reigns tendency to mix his real-life experiences with imagined scenarios.
He was great at animating and dramatizing real-life experiences, but he also had a knack for dreaming up fantasy scenarios and making them feel real. If anything, I know every story was connected some real life moment that he witnessed.
A video for the song will be released in March. Listen to Santa Romeo below:
