Gian Santoro is Continually Murdering Themself Over and Over to Find Their Flyest Version
"Life is scary. And we are all out here living it to the best of our abilities and being the flyest." - Gian Santoro
Gian Santoro is, in my personal (and humble) opinion, one of the best lyricists Australia has to offer in hip-hop! The way their mind works with rhyme schemes, and approaches to certain topics is what the majority in the genre could only dream of. Put that on top of the grimiest and most soulful production — this time by US collaborator Stevie! — on their latest album For the Lovers and the Poets, it leaves the listener with something new to pull from every element on every repeat listen!
But what has always drawn me to Gian, not just as a friend but as an artist, is the pain and realness of their art. Whilst the “tortured poet” trope might seem like a cliché, Gian embodies it in a way that connects you to their art in a special and emotional way. You can’t help but empathise with their lows and celebrate their highs! Drop Gian in any era; the renaissance or the craziness of the modern society, and they will still be posted up in the latest designer wear, letting you know why they are “the Flyest.”
Photo credit: Dillo
BEING THE FLYEST AND ADDRESSING THE LOVERS AND THE POETS
To get into the album, and this isn’t a new thing for you, but you always refer to yourself as the flyest. And it definitely feels a lot deeper than just hip-hop. It definitely is a reflection of what you’ve been through. What does being the flyest mean to you in the context of your life and the culture around you with this release?
With this release, I think being the flyest means the same thing as it has the whole time to be honest. I am definitely a different flyest because I’m a different person, and I think every single day I’m a new person. It’s a belief to sit there and call yourself the flyest. We’ve all experienced it when you’re sitting down and you’re really beat by the whole world, beat by what you’re going through. And to just actually look in the mirror, write something down and call yourself the flyest. That thought helps to build that self-esteem and confidence up. And without that, you can’t go and achieve anything that you want to.
We all got the same goals. We all know what we’re headed to, where we’re trying to get to. The flyest doesn’t just mean stepping out in the vintage Moncler or Margiela kicks with the rag or whatever. The flyest is really what’s in your soul and what actually means something to you and means something to the people around you. It’s having that purpose and being able to go out there, achieve your goals, set your ambitions for yourself in the first place and watch yourself succeed, calling yourself the flyest.
We don’t lie on our records. We go out there, we live 100%. Each and every single bar is a real life moment that happens. And that’s something that we pride ourselves on, but that’s something that just comes with being the flyest.
The title of the album is: For the Lovers and the Poets, which obviously feels like you’re addressing two sections of people. It’s the Lovers, and the Poets. Why were those the two groups that you wanted to dedicate this project to?
I think everybody is a lover and a poet, and everybody is an artist. I believe that artistry at its core is in everything that you do and that your soul is in. And if your soul is in it, you love it. It did come from a song actually that I did with Stevie. It was around January 2025. In it I was like:
This is for the lovers and the poets, the runners and Rick Owens,
Who go to sleep with Halo’s glowin’, thunderin’ and snowin’.
And that was just what I felt listening to that beat in that moment, especially having spoken about everything that I spoke about through that song. I was like, this is dedicated to the people that feel and the people that have that space to reflect on what they want and want to see themselves in different lights to get through their higher self. Those are the lovers and the poets.
What role do you think those two qualities play in a world that often rewards being the hardest or having an ego?
I think everybody has an ego. And if you don’t think you have an ego, then you’re the most egotistical person. To a different extent within the genre of hip-hop, that goes back to the authenticity point. I’m not out here trying to prove that i’m hard, or to be this or be that. I am just me. And if you listen to my bars and you’re like, “Wow, this s**t is hard,” its because it is hard! Congratulations, you saw the truth.
This is my purpose, I say that on an album. I knew about my purpose when I was a little kid. I was nine or 10 years old sitting there being like, “I want to be a rapper.” I was standing on my neighbour’s house, which had been knocked down, and I was just rapping with my mom’s iPhone 3 or 3GS or some s**t back in those days. I was like this is what I need to do, and the more that I started writing with poetry and my first ever bars, I understood that the more that I reflected and looked into myself and looked at the whole world, that this is how I would continue to level up and really connect myself to where I’m headed.
One thing I love about poetry in general is it feels like a medium where you can really get across what you 100% of what you would never say in normal conversation, even hip-hop in general as well as a form of poetry. What is it about the art of poetry that really allows you to reach that level of honesty?
Part of it is the silence. When you sit there and you just write poetry, it’s quiet. We don’t have a lot of quiet time nowadays in this world. But you think to your youth and the creativity that flowed when you were younger, it’s because you sat there bored as hell in the house, and you were able to visualise things on the walls, step outside and turn a small garden into a, like an elaborate playground.
Having that space for the peace and the quiet is essential in terms of being able to express that creativity and also reflect on yourself. That’s where you battle your ego the most, because it’s just you. And if you sit there, and I mean genuinely sit there, and you are writing straight bulls**t and it’s only you, who are you?! You know what mean!
When you are the flyest and you sit there on your own and you’re able to pick apart each and everything that’s happening in your life and the lives around you and the world as a whole, and you’re able to be a hundred percent honest on it, that’s poetry. This is your space where it’s just you. No one’s even going to judge this piece of writing. This is between you and yourself right here, right now. And that’s it. The choice to then release it from that point, is when you’ve got to face vulnerability and things like that.
On the other side of that coin is the lovers. How has love in your current relationship shaped the way that you write and how you see the world?
I think she is like my favourite poet in the whole world! And she writes so authentically. Before we were dating, we met in a creative writing class at uni. Just hearing her perform her poetry in front of the class, I was out there and I was like, “Damn, this is everything that I strive to be as well.” She’s absolutely influenced my style because it’s encouraged me to continue to be myself. Like she loves me for me. I love her for her. And we love ourselves for who we are as well.
I’ve started to see the world a little bit differently. I mean, I think that the whole world makes me see the world differently every single day, but I am definitely seeing more love in it. In 2026, I’m giving up on the idea of hope I think. Because hope only takes you so far. Sure, you gotta actually do, and if you’re hoping you’ve got expectations and things don’t go a certain way, it’s a lot easier to feel down about it.
But if you go into every day with the idea that this is a new day, something will happen. Then whatever happens was what was planned anyway, and you get to pivot from that point based on your past experiences and what you want to see for your future self as well.
WESTERN SYDNEY’S INFLUENCE, RESETING FROM MUSIC, AND “PER TE ZIO” DEEPER THEMES
Another thing that pops up a fair bit in your music and is the area of South-West Sydney, which has definitely shaped your art. Even the Inner-West as well. Are there any specific places in those areas that inspire you creatively? It could also be architecture, landmarks, churches, streets.
This whole city inspires me. A little less for the East than the North. No disrespect, but you know what it is. Out South-West, Western Sydney, even in the Inner-West, certain places like Leichhardt or Haberfield, where it’s super Italian and I get to really live that part of myself, because it’s not everywhere that I go that I can be speaking Italian. To be on those streets where I’m able to walk into the cafes and walk in any random shops and speak my language is a huge part of my life and is a beautiful thing.
In particular, obviously Canterbury and Campsie. I spent so much of my childhood and, you know, still spend so much of my days these days ah out there. It’s a busy place, there’s always something happening. And that’s inspiring to just go outside and see people, regardless of the ways that they live.
Was there any place in the process of writing this album that was particularly inspiring, or you maybe visited there and were like, “I need to write something like right now.”
To be honest, my bedroom was quintessential to the making of this album. I spent all of 2024 and the majority of late 2023 as well in studios with other people, and it’s cool when you’re doing work for other people or you’re working with other people. But I realised in 2025 that I didn’t feel connected with my art the same way that I used to. To be completely honest with you, in 2025 there were multiple times I thought of giving up. I was really shattered and it almost broke me. That was the most depressed I’d been that whole year.
And the worst times were when I was thinking about the music, because I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe that this feels so desecrated right now.” This is me, this is my soul, and if I don’t have this, then what do I have? I don’t think that I can operate in all of these other spaces in my life without the soul that’s attached to the music. So my bedroom was a sanctuary, and I looked at the music again and I just decided I don’t need to be at studio sessions every week and try to do things for other people all the time. I need to connect with me again.
So I took it back to where it all started, which was just me in my bedroom in the quiet, riding bars, reflecting. That’s a sacred writing space for me. that’s my favourite place to write any song in the world is just straight in my bedroom. It’s cool when I’m freestyling while getting a massage in Thailand and making the bars up my head on some JAY-Z s**t. Trying to remember a full 16 when I touch back down at a crib. But just being in my room alone with nothing but the beat and my own thoughts and my own soul. That’s where it’s all at for me.
You basically just answered the next question that I was going to ask, which is kind of about how you process a lot of the more darker sides of what you’ve been through. Be that mortality, mental health, loss as well, and how art helps you push into it. I kind of want to lean into the tribute to your uncle. Definitely one of the most emotional moments on the album. How you wrote it was beautiful, as well as heartbreaking. What did writing that song help you understand about him or even about yourself?
A whole lot. Actually with that last question you asked me, I was thinking about that as a key moment and place, because I remember standing outside the wake. Matter of fact, I remember even before going into the funeral and just standing there. People holding up the casket, tears, flooded faces, all the men with stone faces, just trying to keep their cool.
And I remember being in there and the heartbreak that I felt when I wrote about this one. This one particular lyric where I talking about my zia who passed at the end of last year too after her husband. I said I still hear a scream when I lay at night; she was in there in a funeral with dementia. She wasn’t even awake for the first 20 minutes. And then she just woke up and I just remember looking at her and she came to, looked at the coffin, looked at the photos and just started screaming. And I still hear that.
The song helped me understand the sacrifices that he made. Because I’ve understood for a very long time the sacrifices that my family have made, even to be in a position where I’m at right now, where I’m kind of in two minds; do I go chase 100k or do I go chase the music? I understand that that’s the sacrifice that I’ll be making at some point in my life for my future kids. The sacrifices that my whole family made, all of my uncles, my aunties, my parents, my grandparents, everybody who abandoned war-torn places and places with no opportunities and did everything absolutely from scratch, from zero, set up in a whole new country. They risked everything, but they could have sat there in a comfort. I have like 20 more aunts and uncles back in Italy who are in the comfort, but all of these people, they went out and they wanted to change.
Finally, it helped me kind of deal with death a little bit better. He had a love and family and he had a future for multiple generations set up that was all off of the sacrifices and the hard work that he made. And it helped me look at my legacy and all of our legacies a little bit better. And it also helped me reflect on my own selfishness, and it gave me a lot more gratitude, just for still being able to walk around outside. It was beautiful really to be able to process everything and reflect on it all in such a way.
Do you feel like writing that song was closure or more a preservation of the memory?
I don’t believe in closure, so it definitely preserved the memory. I think writing in general is a beautiful thing; I write a journal entry every single day so that I can preserve the parts that just kind of slipped through the cracks in your day-to-day activities. When you go back and you reflect on these you can understand yourself a lot better with how you dealt with a situation, even if it’s just a walk from the bus stop to work.
Photo credit: Dillo
SPIRITUAL LANGUAGE, KILLING PAST VERSIONS OF GIAN, AND FEELINGS ON THE FUTURE
There’s a lot of spiritual language throughout the album. Prayers, commandments, conversations with God. Alongside the imagery and photography. Shout out to Dillo. What role does faith or spirituality play in your life today?
I’m a very spiritual person. And I think a lot of my foundational beliefs are just built on what I’ve heard from other people and what I’ve seen through other people as well. I got faith in the universe as a whole. I believe in a God. Don’t know who, but there’s someone that’s governing this, in my opinion, at least for me in my life.
And especially when it comes to the art, it’s not something that I’m making. Gian Santoro is the vessel that these messages get delivered through. I didn’t craft the words themselves. I didn’t craft the four-four time signature. I didn’t craft hip-hop. It’s all spiritual. It came from somewhere else and I’m just the vessel that delivers these messages.
You have a line where you say you had to murder several versions of yourself coming back to life. When you look back, what were some of those earlier versions of yourself that you had to leave behind?
It’s a lot of versions! That’s why I said several. laughs Realistically, it’s like hundreds. I mean to start off with, when I was younger I kind of had zero confidence. I’d been brought up in a way that reduced a lot of my own self-belief. That was a version of myself that I had to murder. I had bad qualities throughout different periods of my life, depending on what I was going through or dealing with that I had to get rid of in order to grow from.
A lot of time I spent lying to myself when I was younger as well. That was one of those foundational things that as soon as I started properly rapping that left, and I was no longer sitting there saying to myself like, “Oh, I’m fine.” I knew that I wasn’t fine. And to be able to express that with myself already was a murdered version of me too. It’s a pretty brutal image, but that’s the reality of it. You’ve got to grow and you’ve got to leave behind different versions of yourself.
As I said before, I wake up a new person every single day and I still maintain a lot of the qualities from yesterday, but there are certain qualities from yesterday that I know today I’m going to be doing better on and continue to elevate with.
Going into the future, and if you’re willing to share, is there a version in this current era of you that you’re wanting to maybe murder going into the future?
S**t, a version of me without a mil’, that’s for sure! laughs Nah, honestly, where I’m at right now, I’m very happy. You know what, let me keep it a stack. Once I cut the vapes bro, that’s gonna be a new version of myself that come to life. It’s all, you know, the little things. I was having a conversation with the homies a few weeks ago where we were talking about like complacency in the last year. At the end of 2024, we had mad meetings just to plan all of our goals going forward. And one of the things that I was saying was like, “Damn, I just need to drop music. That’s one thing I haven’t done.”
2025, just dropped one single. That was the first year without an album; another reason why I felt so depressed about music. Because I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve been rapping — in terms of dropping music — for like seven years, and that’s the first year without an album. And I always make like 50 songs a year. I could be out here dropping five, you know, 10 if I was cheaping out on people.
But one of those versions of myself that I had to murder was sitting there in the complacency of being like, “No, it’s okay to give up this dream. Like I’m going to chase bread, and I’ll continue to build a better future for future generations that’ll come after me. But I had to recognise that I don’t want to be that dad that looks at their kids and was like, “You know, your father was a rapper until I had to stop because I had to work,” like, I want to do this forever.
Even though a lot of your music talks about survival from the past and going through those experiences, as you look forward, I’m curious if the uncertainty of life excites you or makes you uneasy?
It excites me! Every day is a new day, and I’m going to wake up and face whatever challenges me and take all the achievements and the triumphs that come with it. I think that not being able to 100 % see the future at this point in my life is something that excites me.
I remember when I was 17, I made this note on my laptop for all my life’s goals that I was aiming for. I had when I made x amount of money, when I would be engaged, when I’d be married, when I had my first kids. I was sat there, naive at like 15, 16, thinking that, you know, kids by like 25 was a possibility. And now I’m near 25 and I’m like… that’s expensive! Let alone childcare, I mean, change this government.
I’m glad that the future excites you! Because we’ve known each other for a hot minute, so like we’ve definitely had a whole bunch of conversations off mic. But then if you just get an audience, or some random person listening to your music, they’re like, “Ooh, are you okay? Your music is kind of scary,” or they might be like, “Hmm, I’m not 100 % sure,” but again, I feel like that’s the underlying message of reflecting on these past messages on this album. It’s like, no, the future is bright.
Hundred percent. If someone looks at the album scared, they’re already from the wrong perspective. I mean, if you’re scared, that’s a good thing. Be scared. That’s a critical emotion in terms of growth. You can’t go out there and be brave without having been scared first. I was scared for a lot of years. I’m still scared of a lot of things to this day, but I understand that being scared is the first step to actually going out there and trying something.
Once you brave that fear by making an action, that’s already your first step out of fear into the acceptance And for me, all these things that are “scary” topics that I talk about in my music, it’s all just real life. This is what I actually live through. I look at it all as like I’m petrified of what happened to me yesterday, what happened to me last year, what happened to me over the last five years. I wouldn’t actually even be in a position to talk about it right now, today.
So it’s important to reflect on all of that. Important to recognise that it’s scary, but you know, that’s life. Life is scary. And we are all out here living it to the best of our abilities and being the flyest.
Artwork by: @beenonmoon
For the Lovers and the Poets by Gian Santoro is out now
Written and edited by Ruedi “Ruu.” Holbeck