Santiago x The Natural

This story went nationwide!!! - WGN

So two guys walk into a bar.

The first, Jeffery “The Natural” Stephens ’07, is a black lawyer from Chicago’s South Side. He’s a few inches over 6 feet, all stylish denim with a black flatbrim and a huge pair of Super flattop sunglasses with gold sides. His smile reveals a charismatic Michael Strahan gap between his two front teeth.

The second guy through the door is Lawrence Santiago, a Coushatta Native American architect who grew up in Guam and Louisiana, and transferred to the University of Colorado after his fourth year in Notre Dame’s architecture program. Santiago is wearing a black wool coat and a black wool hat, out of which streams straight black hair that flows past his shoulders. He’s wearing the same sunglasses as Stephens, sunglasses that don’t hide his face so much as amplify his cheekbones.

Most of the time, Santiago and Stephens are professionals known for their meticulousness and work ethic. But come nighttime, when the architect and the lawyer don their black Super sunglasses, they become a rock singer and a rapper. Together they are Santiago x The Natural. The “x” is pronounced “times.” And with their musical powers combined, the rocker/architect times the rapper/lawyer are rising fast into the national spotlight.

In the late summer of 2012, Santiago walked away from his successful architectural career in Los Angeles and joined Stephens in Chicago to pursue their music together full time.

“I was at a point where I want this to be real, instead of kind of a side thing,” Santiago says. “I want to give Jeff a reason to kind of hit pause on his law career and go full time with music.”

Rapper Stephens still balances recording music and practicing law at Holland & Knight, a major Chicago law firm.

When “we were getting our advanced degrees, we were about to see the curtains close on music,” Stephens says. “Then it started like, ‘Wow. We’re not that old. We haven’t gone too deep in our professional lives. We can do music.’”

They created Santiago x The Natural in 2011 and earned popular and commercial success even before Santiago moved to Chicago. Red Eye and the Chicago Tribune hailed them as one of Chicago’s top unsigned artists of 2012. They are performing in Chicago on April 13 with popular rapper Talib Kweli, whom Santiago calls “one of the, if not the, best lyricists in hip-hop history.” ESPN licensed their song “Warriors” for the official BCS National Championship playlist, and Friday Night Fights boxing — impressive endorsements for such a new group.

Yet Santiago and Stephens have always stood out in a crowd, especially at Notre Dame, where they first started collaborating in 2003.

Santiago, then a fourth-year architecture student, had renovated his fourth-floor single in Zahm Hall into a recording studio for his rock band, Station One. Stephens, a freshman living in Keenan, approached Santiago in North Dining Hall with a request to use the studio. Santiago blew him off.

But Stephens persisted, and one of his mix-tapes found its way to Santiago’s ears. Where his request had failed, his rap succeded.

“I was like ‘Wow, this guy, he’s got gold,’” Santiago says.

So the two began recording together, with Santiago writing songs and instrumental tracks that Stephens rapped over. Working together and creating music was their way of connecting with their Notre Dame classmates, most of whom were not black or Native American.

Notre Dame “was a culture shock as far as the economics, the race, and you know, not being as cool as you, Lawrence,” quips Stephens, who grew up in the Ida B. Wells projects and Englewood area in Chicago and attended an almost entirely black all-boys high school, Hales Franciscan. “But I like to say Notre Dame is my Disney World. Because you got all this stuff going on in the hood, and all this stuff going on in the family — [Notre Dame] was like a paradise.”

So they bridged the cultural gap as any musician would: They performed. Then, together, they got really, really popular.

“The blending of the two created a following so that no matter where they were performing, students were following them,” says Iris Outlaw ’90MSA, Notre Dame’s director of Multicultural Student Programs and Services. Outlaw worked with Santiago and Stephens when they served as diversity educators, encouraging their fellow students to attend such cultural events as Black Images and Latin Expressions.

“Jeff was pretty much an instant celebrity at ND, especially after his first Keenan Revue,” says Matt Haggerty ’07, Stephens’ roommate, about the rapper’s appearance in the dorm’s yearly variety show. “I was amazed at how he seemed to know everybody.”

Father Dan Parrish, CSC, ’03M.Div., ’08MNA, rector of Zahm Hall when Santiago lived there, says Santiago “looked at the world — his studies, but even the broader world — in terms of possibility.”

Santiago and Stephens continued their collaboration while earning a master’s in architecture from USC and a - Notre Dame Magazine

Maybe it’s the hair. Maybe it’s the perfectly cut, salmon-colored blazer, or the flat-top Super sunglasses, or black flatbrim that says BOOM, but rocker/architect Lawrence Santiago and rapper/lawyer Jeffery Stephens ’07 stand out in a crowd. And that’s exactly how they want it.

Both are talented professionals. Stephens is a lawyer in Chicago; Santiago has an advanced degree in architecture. But their off-hours work sets them apart: Together the two Domers are the musical duo Santiago X The Natural (the X is pronounced ‘times’), producing original music that accomplishes the rare feat of being alt-rock, R&B soul and funky hip-hop at the same time.

They jumped onto the national radar with their blue-and-gold arena anthem “Warriors” in 2012, then followed it up with a self-produced new single, “Got A Hold Of Me,” a defiant, anti-cubicle manifesto in their signature rocksteady style.

Life is moving fast for Santiago and Stephens. They’ve scooped up licensing agreements with ESPN, earned acclaim from the Chicago Tribune as one of Chicago’s best unsigned acts and performed at the Notre Dame pep rally before the 2012 game against Michigan. Their return was a homecoming of sorts, back to the campus where the talented duo first started recording in Santiago’s Zahm Hall dorm room in the 2003-2004 school year.

The up-and-comers recently spoke with Notre Dame Magazine about writing music at 3 a.m., their hopes of playing Lollapalooza and drawing musical inspiration from Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait.” From an edited transcript:

ND: Balancing music with professional life must be a lot of work.
LS: Music and architecture has always been a hard balance for me.
JS: But for me, there’s just no way I’m going back to the hood. There’s no way I’m doing that.

ND: Why do you think people in the business world are encouraging you to pursue music?
JS: Because it’s good.
LS: Well the music’s good, but I feel like a lot of successful professionals have had…
JS: Passions?
LS: Other passions that they’ve had to suppress to realize success. We think, through their encouragement, that the hybridity of being successful professionals and passionate creative types is our reality. It’s where we want to be.
JS: I never really felt like I was meant to have a normal life, especially after I started recording and hearing our stuff. This is the barometer I would test with: How can I be a dad, or a granddad, and my kids not know how good I was?
LS: And I’ve always known this about Jeff. We both feel the same way, in different respects. But we’re each other’s catalyst, you know? We’re each other’s validation.
JS: And you got that long hair. The girls like that.
LS: We both feel the same, our music is complementary, we both enjoy each other’s music.
JS: Yeah man, I feel like it’s destined to happen. I love collaborating with Lawrence.
LS: In Jeff I saw a rapper, a diamond in the rough, who has a good ear. That’s what sets us apart from other hip-hop groups. We are songwriters first. We don’t take somebody else’s beat and rap over it and call it a song. We make every single sound on every single track. We record it ourselves. We do it all.

ND: What is your creative process? How do you write music?
LS: It’s organic. It’s organic first.
JS: When we gotta nail it down, when we gotta finish, we gotta sit there.

ND: So it’s a grind sometimes.
LS: There’s a grind element, but we understand that perfection doesn’t exist in art. Definitely not in hip-hop. There’s a time and a place we just have to call it finished. We have all these organic, conceptual songs. Each one of our songs is surrounded by imagery.

ND: Imagery?
LS: Imagery. Each song is surrounded by these graphic images that reinforce the emotion or the concept that either starts with a beat or starts with a lyric to try and push to the other side. If it’s lacking in lyrics, we’ll create an image to the beat that pulls out the emotions and creates the lyrics. And vice versa.
JS: He’ll come up with some stuff, and I don’t know what the hell he’s doin’….At 3 a.m. I’ll get this riff, like a piano with this beat. And I’m just like, ‘the hell were you doing at 3 a.m.?’

ND: Growing up, what were the styles that your families listened to?
LS: For me, growing up on Guam, it was dance hall reggae music, soul from the 70’s, funk, Earth Wind and Fire. I was really soaked in the hip-hop scene when I was young.
JS: Me, I was listening to the 90’s golden age, golden era music. You know, Bad Boy records and Death Row records. Arista, the Face, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, 112, Tupac, Biggie [Smalls], all those. I’m even an Eminem guy.

ND: You’re going to be on a desert island and you get five albums you can listen to forever.
LS: My first four would be: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, ATLiens by OutKast, and Sublime’s Sublime and 40 oz. to freedom. I gotta think about the fifth one.
JS: Either The Marshall Mathers LP or The Eminem Show. Paula Col - Notre Dame Magazine

Next up was Santiago X The Natural, and they killed their set. The Natural is an attorney by day, but you can feel his love for the music in his voice. His flow is solid, and he had some really good lyrics that felt honest and heartfelt. That’s my kind of rapper. Santiago provided the singing, and he was hitting some impressive notes. The ladies definitely loved him, and I can totally see why-in his leather jacket and dark sunglasses he looks just like a Native American Julian Casablancas (who also happens to be an architect).

They played almost entirely new songs from their upcoming album, and the crowd loved it even without having anything familiar to relate to. Their very first song was rapped over a White Stripes track, which I really enjoyed. There was another one later that I think was a Beck track, but I could be wrong. These two currently have a song running on ESPN, and last year they played at a pep rally for Notre Dame-two strong pluses in my book. - Music. Defined.

Next up was Santiago X The Natural, and they killed their set. The Natural is an attorney by day, but you can feel his love for the music in his voice. His flow is solid, and he had some really good lyrics that felt honest and heartfelt. That’s my kind of rapper. Santiago provided the singing, and he was hitting some impressive notes. The ladies definitely loved him, and I can totally see why-in his leather jacket and dark sunglasses he looks just like a Native American Julian Casablancas (who also happens to be an architect).

They played almost entirely new songs from their upcoming album, and the crowd loved it even without having anything familiar to relate to. Their very first song was rapped over a White Stripes track, which I really enjoyed. There was another one later that I think was a Beck track, but I could be wrong. These two currently have a song running on ESPN, and last year they played at a pep rally for Notre Dame-two strong pluses in my book. - Music. Defined.

Here's a list of songs from performers featured on ESPN’s BCS National Championship Game, links to the artist’s websites and links for you to download and buy the songs and/or albums:

Music for the BCS National Championship Game

The Script

"Hall of Fame" from the “#3” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Fun.

"Some Nights" from the “Some Nights” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Pitbull feat TJR

"Don’t Stop The Party" from the “Global Warming” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

The Heavy

"How You Like Me Now?" from the “The House That Dirt Built” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

The Heavy

"What Makes A Good Man?" from the “The Glorious Dead” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Kaki King

"Great Round Burn" from the “Glow” album (iTunes | Amazon)

Santiago X The Natural

"Warriors" from the “Spirit of Notre Dame” album
(iTunes | Amazon) - ESPN

Here's a list of songs from performers featured on ESPN’s BCS National Championship Game, links to the artist’s websites and links for you to download and buy the songs and/or albums:

Music for the BCS National Championship Game

The Script

"Hall of Fame" from the “#3” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Fun.

"Some Nights" from the “Some Nights” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Pitbull feat TJR

"Don’t Stop The Party" from the “Global Warming” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

The Heavy

"How You Like Me Now?" from the “The House That Dirt Built” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

The Heavy

"What Makes A Good Man?" from the “The Glorious Dead” album
(iTunes | Amazon)

Kaki King

"Great Round Burn" from the “Glow” album (iTunes | Amazon)

Santiago X The Natural

"Warriors" from the “Spirit of Notre Dame” album
(iTunes | Amazon) - ESPN

You may not know hip-hop duo Santiago x The Natural by name, but you've probably heard their anthem, "Warriors," if you've been watching football closely this season.

The song, which combines the vocal talents of Lawrence Santiago and the hard rhymes of Chicago-based rapper Jeff "The Natural" Stephens, was released last year on iTunes. Since then "Warriors" has played numerous times this season during NFL games and has become the de facto fight song for the No. 1 Fighting Irish in their undefeated season en route to the BCS title game on Monday against No. 2 Alabama.

The lyrics within call back to Notre Dame’s days, even long before Lou Holtz:

Now total request live now you've got me / The flow is one of a kind, not too sloppy Wanna have my memory high like Knute Rockne's / Throw them hands up in the sky if you copy

Stephens and Lawrence met as students at a Notre Dame dining hall almost a decade ago as underclassmen during the Tyrone Willingham era, when there was a renewed feeling of excitement about Fighting Irish football -- but when Notre Dame wins were tougher to come by.

Still, it isn't all about football. Both Santiago and Stephens mention that from the moment they stepped on campus as high school students and prospective Domers, and since graduation, that Notre Dame inspiration has flowed from within to every aspect of life, including music.


Santiago x The Natural
Lawrence Santiago, left and Jeff Stephens, right, with Notre Dame legend Jerome Bettis.
"When Jeff and I set out to work together we weren't thinking about a football fight song so much, but we did think about how much our roots and friendship had an impact. What came of it was something that was surreal because Notre Dame for us comes from the heart," Santiago said.

His partner in rhyme also weighed in.

"When we were writing the song, the mission wasn't to pump up the fans," Stephens added.

"We're glad fans have taken so well to it," Santiago said, "But the song as we wrote it was for the players, and how they and the community inspire us."

Santiago and Stephens started their respective music careers in South Bend. Since graduation, Santiago and The Natural have had separately pursued their own music endeavors and non-musical careers, while keeping connected over the years.

"I used to be in a rock band working on my own music," said Santiago, who also spent much of the past several years as an architect in Los Angeles. "I brought Jeff in on a couple of tracks I did, and every time, his voice and style added a different dimension." After that there was an urge to collaborate and combine their genres, in rap and rocksteady, respectively, to create a new sound.

Making it official last year in early 2011 as "Santiago x The Natural" (which, like a mathematical expression, is pronounced "Santiago times The Natural"), the two have performed live with big-name musical acts, including Akon, Wyclef Jean, Cake and Mya.

Since then, Santiago picked up and moved from his career in L.A. to Chicago, where Stephens is an attorney, to focus on their forthcoming album and music for their latest single and video, "Got A Hold Of Me."

"One of the biggest things we love about Notre Dame is the overwhelming sense of community. Notre Dame opened up a lot of doors for us to better our lives. We love Notre Dame football," Natural said, "but more importantly Notre Dame, to us, is home."

Both halves of Santiago x The Natural think the Irish will come to play and best Alabama to win their first national championship since 1988.

“I don’t think we’ll come out cocky but we’ll come out strong,” Stephens said. “It will be a tight, close game of two good teams, but I think we can come out on top.”

- Andy Frye - ESPN

See link - Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

Home base: Streeterville
Need to know: South Side native rapper The Natural (real name: Jeffery Z. Stephens) has collaborated with producer/vocalist (Lawrence) Santiago since 2004 but officially teamed up toward the end of 2011. They combine ‘90s hip-hop love—“for us that was like the golden era of music,” says Stephens, 27—with rock, electro, dancehall and an island feel, informed by the background of Santiago, a Native American who grew up in Guam. He now resides in L.A. but will move to Chicago in August.
Influences: Sublime, 2Pac, Jack White, Born Jamericans, Nas, Gorillaz, Lauryn Hill, Jackson 5, Outkast, Kanye West, Black Thought, Lee Perry
Live show: “We put it all out there when we're up on stage ... we look at it as both an artform of emotional expression and an instantaneous means to connect with people in the most visceral way we know how--beats to move to, sincere lyrics, and melodies to sing-along with," says Santiago, 29.
Claim to fame: The group’s song “Warriors” was chosen as the official theme song for professional lacrosse team the Minnesota Swarm, who will soon fly out Santiago and The Natural to perform at halftime. Individually, the Natural has opened for Akon, the Clipse, Mya and Cake, and Santiago has opened for Wyclef Jean, Lyfe Jennings and Avant, and appeared in Terrence Malick’s “The New World” and the Steven Spielberg-produced miniseries “Into the West.” - Los Angeles Times