Rapper Richie Branson can be a well-known character in San Antonio’s music community. As a music producer, he has found recent success dealing with major label clientele including Def Jam Recordings and Sony Music Entertainment. Richie’s production is on par with most industry production, but what really makes him stand out is his style being an artist. San Antonio’s hip-hop scene contains music that is not too not the same as the hard-hitting southern club-friendly music of Houston or Dallas. What sets Richie aside from most artists within the San Antonio music scene will be the material of several of his songs. While Richie’s catalog has plenty of typical mainstream hip-hop songs, his favorite material is actually video gaming.

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Over time, gaming rap has changed in to a popular hip-hop subculture called “nerdcore”. While Richie embraces this subculture as part of his videogame-inspired raps, he calls his 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 under the tutelage of his manager/mentor Kevin Peli, he’s playing video games and rapping on 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 existing Republic. After releasing several songs from your project online, Richie’s music was featured over a variety of major gaming sites including AOL’s Joystiq.com. The music from your “Cold Republic” generated a great deal buzz in the gaming community that longtime Star Wars videogame composer Mark Griskey even co-signed Richie’s creative work.

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Richie’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 for 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.