N.O.R.E. is an American rapper with over 25 years in the game. Around the world, he is best known for his 2002 hit, ‘Nothin’’, which made the US Billboard Top 10 and was also a major hit in the UK. He also had a big US hit with ‘Oye Mi Canto’, which has been streamed over 93 million times on Spotify alone. He has also released seven studio albums, three of which made the US Top 10 and has collaborated with the likes of Mary J Blige, RZA, Pharrell Williams, Diddy, Pitbull, Fat Joe, and many more. His recent single releases include 2021’s ‘We Still Here’, ‘Goin Up’, and ‘Outta Line’.
N.O.R.E. was born Victor Santiago Jr in New York City in 1977. He first began to get a rep in the mid-1990s, rapping under the name Noreaga and forming part of the duo Capone-N-Noreaga, who released their debut single, ‘Illegal Life’, in 1996. In 1998, rechristened as N.O.R.E. (N****z on the Run Eating), he went solo and soon had a US Rap number-one hit with ‘Superthug’. In 2002, his success went global when he teamed up with The Neptunes (then the hottest production team on the planet) to release ‘Nothin’’, a track that still fills dancefloors 20 years later.
By the end of the noughties, N.O.R.E. had become CEO of his own company, Militainment Business, and announced that he was stepping back from rapping to focus on the business side of things. But as subsequent singles and mixtapes show, he’s still hitting the studio as much as ever.