Hey everybody from in Pure Music, I'm Robin Hilton with the latest installment

in our second season of Louder Than a Riot. It's the podcast that digs deeper into the unwritten

rules of rap and the rule breakers who refuse to play nice. In this episode, Hitmaker,

Saucy Santana takes center stage. As the Louder Than a Riot team asks how queer rappers

can turn viral visibility into lasting success without being tokenized. The team tracks Santana's

rise from being a makeup artist to the stars to becoming a star in his own right with viral

songs like Walk on Like a Dog and Material Girl. While the collision of TikTok and hip hop

has ushered in a new era of visibility for rap's most marginalized voices, it's also a double-edged

sword that cuts both ways, especially for queer artists. He's got the bars, the boldness,

and the booty, but can Santana break through the industry's attempts to keep him boxed in.

That's up next on Louder Than a Riot. A warning before we begin, this podcast is explicit

in every way. In this episode contains homophobic language and references to suicide.

Tallahassee and Perry is small, so when somebody doing something with glam and it actually works

and it's good quality you won't hear about it. And I do hair. So, you know, hair and makeup go

hand in hand. Mitch Copeland is a hair stylist out of Tallahassee, Florida. He's known as the

hair physician. And back in 2017, he started to hear about somebody else on the glam scene.

You can get strips and you can get outfit to come out of different beach. One stop shot.

I've always wanted to send something to be and I have never got one.

Santana's reputation definitely proceeded. He had all the sauce. And Mitch, he had to meet him.

And finally, the stars aligned.

My first time saying he definitely wasn't a full face. Lashes, makeup. He was actually doing makeup

when I first seemed very like very first seen. And he was moving with his client so fast and I was

...