Ahead of his sound check at the New Balance and Stone Island 574 Legacy launch event, END. caught up with Leicester rapper Sainté to discuss honouring his roots, creating his own blueprints and his love of vintage cars.
If you’ve paid even the slightest bit of attention to the UK’s contemporary rap scene, then it’s likely you’ll be aware of Leicester’s very own Sainté. His sound is underscored by an infectious warmth and haziness, drawing influence from a myriad of global sounds and casting these through his own distinctive, singular lens.
Think of it like this: a tree couldn’t credit anything else but its own roots for growth. For me, my hometown is so important, as it’s played such a huge part in me becoming who I am now as an artist — having that underdog mentality. Even as a small child and having that big vision and mindset, it will forever be important to me. My kids — my kids’ kids, even —they’re all going to know about Leicester.
It's life. Life is never the same. Every year is different. For me, I feel like there are definitely blueprints to follow in music — and, of course, no hate to anyone that does follow one — but there are no blueprints set out for me, I need to create my own. I never planned to do music, so me going into that, I’m going to set my own. For me, I feel like you’re always figuring yourself out, no one’s ever found or figured it out completely. I love experimenting and nobody can tell me what to do. I do music for the sake of loving music, I don’t do it for the sake of anything else, like being the most popular or the coolest, so the experimentation part is inevitable from me being true to myself.
"Having my identity and not losing myself is key. If you know Sainté and you hear a song, you’ll know it’s a Sainté song, so it’s working"
I feel like it’s just unique. For me, the balance of those two sounds, or whatever sounds some people might hear, are a direct reflection of my personality. I’d be lying if I said I listened to strictly UK music, or strictly just US, so what I listen to you tend to hear that coming out in my music. Again, having my identity and not losing myself is key. If you know Sainté and you hear a song, you’ll know it’s a Sainté song, so it’s working.
It’s definitely fun being able to bring a new audience to an artist I’m collaborating with. To be honest, whoever I have features with, most of the time I’ve always been a fan of that person. Like working with Potter Payper and him being one of the GOATs of the UK scene, I was even like “how? This is actually crazy”. But for me, it’s just amazing the fact that I can bring new ears to new artists. I feel like we’re all kind of A&Rs in life, you know? If you know how to say why you like or don’t like a song, there’s elements of A&R in there. For me, I definitely feel like I have that connection with my audience, as I feel like I naturally attract people that are like myself. That’s what I’m trying to do, rather than make people like me. If I do my own thing, people that are into the same things will naturally gravitate towards that.
With cars — and I don’t want people to get this mixed up with being materialistic — but I’ve been into them before I could even drive. You can always look at a car and relate to one, you know, or see something and think “that car kind of has my personality, it purrs”. But connecting it to fashion and colourways, I just love seeing cars in different colours. It’s so important to me, I’m a huge car person, and now I can drive, it’s just added to the love for it.
Again, just like cars, I’ve had a love of fashion even before I could afford the fashion I was into. Shout out to my mum though, who used to dress me when I was a kid. Even though I might not have liked all the outfits at the time, it definitely gave me the drive to then want to dress myself. I feel like it’s just expression, again. I get dressed depending on my mood, so like today, I’m wearing yellow, I’m happy, the sky might be grey but I’m smiling. It’s always been important, for example say when you were at school, there might have been another kid who had a spider man, batman or iron man t shirt, and you would see how that kid would move when they were dressing in a way that was themselves, you could see the serotonin with this type of dressing. I find myself navigating through the different phases of my life, but every phase, I’ve never actually left it fully behind, I’ve kind of kept it all in my arsenal.
It's the personality that the clothes carry. For me, I have a bunch of books based on the times before I was of an age where I could be flexing how people flex, but I just love seeing how people used to dress and looking back on fashion history. I also just think it’s a flex wearing something that’s older than me. I just have a natural and organic love of archival clothing, and again, I guess the environment I’m in and the people I’m around inspires me — like my uncle and my aunties, who love to collect stuff. Now I look at stuff and I’m like, “Oh, that person had that in ’08, ’05, ’01 — I need that”.
You know, for me, I definitely feel like they're understated, chill, natural and luxury – all of those things in one. I’m flexing Stone Island with New Balances right now, and you know, I feel like with most high-end brands they might look cool, but they aren’t nearly as comfortable. Seeing Stone Island and New Balance together again, seeing how they reference colour palettes from the actual archives and incorporate that into the shoe, it’s cool man.