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Russell Llantino (born October 13, 1993), better known by his stage name RUSSELL! and formerly known as D-Pryde , is a Canadian rapper hailing from Brampton, Ontario, and is now based out of New Jersey, United States.[1] He is currently signed to label Rostrum Records. Russell GIlbert Llantino was born on October 13, 1993 in Mississauga, Ontario, located in the Greater Toronto Area, He is of Filipino and Spanish descent.[2] Three years after his birth, his father walked out on the family, and was never seen again.[3] This lead his mother to move to the nearby city of Brampton, where the Llantinos lived in neighbourhood which Russell describes as "low-income and underprivileged".[4] In many of his lyrics, D-Pryde cites the fact that him being of Asian descent gave him ridicule for his interest in his rap career,[5] and has frequently stressed the hardships of being an Asian rapper in the music industry.[4] Llantino started releasing rap tracks online at the age of fourteen, and decided to pursue rapping as a professional hobby.[6][7] Many of his rap tracks are uploaded onto YouTube, many of which are accompanied with music videos. At the age of sixteen, D-Pryde was signed to underground record label Mars Music Group in July 2010,[8][9] in which he released his first mixtape through the label entitled MARS on June 3, 2011. MARS features Toronto based recording artist and record producer August Rigo, who also produced the tracks on the mixtape. In July 2011, D-Pryde was featured on RapCity, where he shot his music video.[10]

Starting on August 23, 2011, D-Pryde embarked on his first tour around Canada, where he performed along with rapper J. Cole. The tour first started at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, and subsequently at venues in Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta, and then Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Toronto and London, Ontario, and then finishing off on September 7, 2011, at a venue in Montreal, Quebec.[11]

D-Pryde released the mixtape Flagship on June 3, 2012. 

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