With the St.Pete Hip Hop scene in full force and so many dope artists and styles popping up I thought I would put people on to who some of the pioneers of this St.Pete Hip Hop shit are. First up is one of my biggest inspirations Robert Gallardo.
The first time I remember hearing about Gallardo was his series of visuals he did for Crown Marquiss, Ameen Spade, Mario So Dope and the rest of the Local Muzik crew. The video he did for the J Goodie and Crown Marquiss classic track “Unsuccessful” was recognized as an instant classic at the time. If only we got an Ancient Barbarian video.
Another one of my favorite videos from Gallardo is the “All I Want” video from Smooth Hines featuring Crown Marquiss. This one was actually filmed at a corner store right down the road from my house. This video showed me that people from St.Pete could actually be apart of Hip Hop and be on our own shit. Back in the day Marquiss, Smooth, FKB, DJ Shurefire, and Gallardo could do no wrong, which is still pretty much true still to this day.
After his dominance in the St.Pete Hip Hop scene Gallardo decided to take his talents to the next level becoming the creative director for A$AP Rocky, designing and helping Rocky create the vision for his album “Testing”. This also opened the door for Gallardo to join the AWGE creatives collective. Gallardo had major input on all of Rockys set design as well as the vision for the videos accompanying “Testing”.
Gallardo was able to bring Rocky’s dreams to life with both of his sets for Camp FlogGnaw in 2016 and 2017. Has a member of AWGE Gallardo had major input in the first A$AP Mob album “Cozy Tapes Vol.1” designing the album cover as well as the memorable “Yamborghini High” video.
Some of the more underrated videos from Gallardo are “New Choppa” by Playboi Carti and my favorite “Richard Mille Plain” by Gunna. The late has some ahead of its time visuals aspects, reminding me of the film “Uncut Gems”.
Now that he is no longer doing free lance work, Gallardo has become a Youtuber creating vlogs and content to help other creatives. He is the creator of two apps the “Adventures of Gallardo” app and “Cover Art Studio”. He also has a greyscale Rubik’s Cube in development. For the last few years Gallardo has only dressed in grey color ways to keep up his image like some of his creative influences.
Gallardo also developed his own crypto currency “$GREY”. “$GREY” can be used in the Grey Area to trade and share ideas with other creatives. Only 10 Million $GREY will be created.
Who knows what Robert Gallardo has planned next in his creative projects. He’s got a solid foundation behind him, most notably social media rep King Quel. I would like to possibly see him curate a series on the Criterion Channel or get back into making videos for select artists. Either way I will support and thank him for everything he has done for the St.Pete Hip Hop Scene.