Surrounded by the purest popular and neighborhood culture of his city, music came into his life thanks to his grandfather, who at a very young age showed him his love for the guitar and the Antioquian tiple. Years later, this first love mutated into a devoted admiration for several of the North American rock bands of the moment: Blink 182, Sum 41, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Papa Roach.
Yet, almost in the blink of an eye, a simple CD and a computer program would become the turning point for the artist’s upcoming career. A cousin asks Santiago to borrow his tape recorder, who doesn’t hesitate to do her the favor; a couple of days later, the recorder is back, this time with a red and “burned” CD, as bootlegs are called in Colombia. When Santiago presses play, a little guitar pluck gives way to a chorus that says: “En la disco bailoteo, mezclamo’ un fumeteo, eooo…”. The year was 2003 and the song was by Puerto Ricans Wisin & Yandel, produced by producers Luny Tunes & Noriega.
At the same time, around those same days, a close friend had shown Santiago a music making program called Adobe Audition. He was totally fascinated. Once he absorbed the basic knowledge of it, he began to take advantage of it within his own school: his girl classmates who danced in the talent shows needed someone to mix all the songs of the performance, so Santiago began to earn $5000 pesos (almost a dollar) for leaving the CDs just the way they wanted them.
These two situations would become the starting point for a new direction in Santiago Orrego Gallego’s life: now the love for rock became an overflowing love for an unknown genre that step by step was taking over the streets of Medellin, and with this new music a new name would appear, a new game-changing project: SOG.
From there, almost as if the universe was waiting to conspire in his favor, SOG took the musical reins without a second thought. That’s how the first fruits of his new career as a producer began to arrive: “Tu cuerpo me llama”, released in 2011, quickly became a national hit; along with Yelsid, the romantic reggaeton artist at the time, he released hits such as “El bus”, “Volverás” and “Perdida”. In 2017, already with a hard-earned recognition in the local arena, he co-produced with Dayme & El High and Ronald El Killa the song “Sensual Inspiration”, by Jowell & Randy and Farruko.
The following year he arrived at one of the most recognized record labels in the city, Kapital Music, where he began to develop his own sound that, together with a new golden generation of producers and composers such as Sky Rompiendo, Mosty, Bull Nene, Ovy On The Drums, The Rudeboyz, Jowan & Rolo, Feid, among others, would mark the magic formula that would place Medellin in the eyes of the whole world. While at Kapital Music he began to work with new names of the local scene such as Totoy El Frío, Natan & Shander, Nath, Blessd, Flako Gallego and Ryan Castro.
The latter, a classmate from the same Diego Echavarría Misas school in the Florencia neighborhood, would become his partner of a thousand battles, a dynamic ghetto duo that would quickly position itself as the most disruptive revelation of Colombian reggaeton.
