Rapper from San Antonio is making waves together with his game inspired music Rapper Richie Branson can be a well-known character in San Antonio’s music community. As a music producer, he's found recent success dealing with major label clientele including Def Jam Recordings and Sony Music Entertainment. Richie’s production is comparable to most industry production, but what really makes him stand out is his style being an artist. San Antonio’s hip-hop scene consists of music that is not too not the same as the hard-hitting southern club-friendly music of Houston or Dallas. What sets Richie besides most artists within the San Antonio music scene is the subject matter of many of his songs. While Richie’s catalog has plenty of typical mainstream hip-hop songs, his favorite material is video gaming.
san antonio musicOver time, game rap has changed into a popular hip-hop subculture known as “nerdcore”. While Richie embraces this subculture as part of his videogame-inspired raps, he calls their own style “nerdcool” as a result of his capability to cross in and out of mainstream music: “Sometimes I’m a nerd making music for the nerds, sometimes I’m a nerd making music for everybody” he states. When Richie isn’t doing industry work underneath the tutelage of his manager/mentor Kevin Peli, he’s playing video games and rapping about them. He has been gaining a reasonable amount of notoriety from his recent game-related recordings. One of his current projects, “Cold Republic”, can be a mixtape focused on one of his favorite game titles: Alien: The Old Republic. After releasing a couple of songs from the project online, Richie’s music was featured over a number of major gaming sites including AOL’s Joystiq.com. The music from the “Cold Republic” generated a great deal buzz within the gaming community that longtime Star Wars videogame composer Mark Griskey even co-signed Richie’s creative work.
san antonio rapperRichie’s unorthodox creativity places him in a different lane than many people making music in Dallas. He will not follow any sort of formula for musical success and instead, he marches for the beat of his own drum. He's unique in the power to shine on both mainstream hip-hop songs as well as the videogame-inspired music he likes to create. Basically, he simply wants to prove a place that artist should make music in what they personally love, not whatever they think others do.