Sansone
Sansone’s a hip hop artist, songwriter, and producer building his dreams from Chicago, IL.
With an emphasis on spiritual honesty and vocal delivery, Sansone stirs together the styles of conscious and mainstream rap, creating records influenced by the reality of his youth and his relationship with God.
Moving from house to house with his mother and father in the Chicagoland area, Sansone’s childhood was littered with pain. Drug abuse, broken relationships, and tragedy were a constant presence in his family as he witnessed the fragility of humanity at a young age. Instead of resorting to anger and despair, he turned to music.
He dove into hip-hop after noticing the vulnerability rappers were able to present in their songs. At age 16, he began to write his own lyrics and built a catalogue of tracks displaying his storytelling talent. After losing both of his parents to illness by 22, Sansone felt that something was missing in his life. After searching, he found that missing "something" in his newfound relationship with God.
We know you’ll be encouraged and inspired as you hear more from his heart, story, and pursuit.
What dream are you currently turning into reality?
I’m a Chicago based Hip-Hop artist with a dream to write music with intention - To write songs that share stories of my life and how God has always been a part of it, even when I didn’t know it.
The beautiful thing about music is the way it connects with someone through it. Part of my dream is to build a community of people who feel just as connected to one another as they do to the music. That they’d see something more than just songs, they’d find a pathway for community.
When did you first realize you discovered your dream?
I’ve always been really interested in music. I grew up listening to a lot of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the rest of the Rat Pack, but it wasn’t until I saw the movie “Ray” that I fell in love with it. There was something special with how Ray Charles used and pushed his voice. His movements were as captivating as his lyrics. You could really hear the heart and the soul of his life in each record. That’s really when the connection was made, where it all started - Back in 2004.
I started diving into Hip-Hop and Rap when I was in high school. I was never the biggest fan of Rap because the content I heard on the radio was hard to relate to. That all changed when a friend of mine introduced me to the Underground Rap scene, and I started listening to different artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Logic, and Mac Miller. That’s when I began seeing how storytelling was such a major component of it all.
After that, it was pretty much all I listened to - I memorized hundreds of songs. One day, when I was 16, I was in shower and just started having words pop in my head and started freestyling with it. I really liked what I was saying, so I rushed out, grabbed the first notebook I could find, and wrote my first song a few hours later. I immediately became obsessed with writing and telling stories about my life. Writing became a powerful coping mechanism for me, and I’ve never looked back since.
How does your faith go hand in hand with pursuing your dream?
It took me a long time to let God into my life. I grew up as a traditional Roman Catholic Italian kid, and I didn’t have any real experiences with God. After having a few opportunities to perform and expand my reach as an artist, I realized my music could really help others.
I became so invested in writing for the needs of others, my songs started feeling less like stories and more like prescriptions. I had put a lot of expectations on myself and felt a lot of pressure from it. I knew it was time to take a step back, so I took a break from writing for about a year.
In ways only God could do, that was the year when I actually had a real encounter with Him. I soon after decided to get baptized and started living for Him. Once I made that decision, I started letting God into more and more of my dreams, and allowing Him to do what He wanted to do with it. I needed to prioritize my relationship with Him first over everything else, and then I was able to pursue music in the way I always dreamt.
What’s one or two practical steps you take to keep moving forward?
Wow, there’s so many things I’ve learned that helped me find tangible success and stability in my pursuit of music. Here are a couple:
Be in constant communication with God.
Absolutely make a schedule, and set goals for things to be accomplished.
Find a community of people that support you, push you, lift you up, keep you grounded, and believe in you.
What encouragement would you give someone who’s going after their dream?
Let your relationship with God take priority over your art. As a Christian artist, don’t just bring your art to God, but bring Him into the creative process with you. If you’ve gone ahead of Him, remember to take a step back, reevaluate, and then keep moving forward with Him.
Being a Christian artist is never about creating from your own strength, but allowing Him to be a part of the process. His help is always what makes the difference.