ORLANDO, Fla. – Rappers usually show off their million-dollar mansions in music videos, but one Orlando man is using videos and some clever lyrics to show off and sell other people’s homes — not to mention, he’s rising to social media fame doing it.
So, is he a rapper or a realtor? Surprise! Shawn Romano is both.
“A lot of people think I don’t know anything about the music when they see my videos online,” Romano said. “I take a lot of pride in music and the craft”.
Romano was actually a rapper. At the age of 12, he learned how to write rhymes through his childhood best friend’s older brother.
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Down the road, the Virginia/D.C. native found himself on the move to Kentucky where he ended up on the Backwoods Records label owned by another friend at the time. Along with roughly 15 other artists, Romano started making records, handing out mixtapes and CDs under the name South Paw Da Don.
“My name was originally South Paw because I was a huge Rocky fan and did some boxing myself, but when you googled that name a lot of people would show up in the search, so a friend suggested I add ‘Da Don’ to my name and that worked,” Romano said.
Romano went on to make 5 albums along with several mixtapes, even opening for some big names in the rap game like Killa Priest, Shawty Lo, D4L, Coolio, and Afroman.
For the last 18 years, Romano has called Florida home. His career took a different path in 2014.
“I kind of turned my back on music for a while,” Romano said. “I was an artist caught between the era of handing out CDs and mixtapes and the internet wave where newer artists would blast off because they hopped on that wave and here I was trying to make that transition from the older way to the new and it wasn’t as easy as it looked.”
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Romano needed a career, so he went into home security sales and transitioned into real estate.
“I was talking to my grandmother who was a real estate agent and she said why don’t you give real estate a try,” Romano said. “She paid for my real estate school and I have done it ever since.”
Real estate was a different ballgame for Romano. After a five-year hiatus from music, his love for lyrics came back in a different way.
“I wanted to enjoy what I was doing more and bring in something I love into it while setting myself apart from other realtors”, he said. “I never wanted to be the typical suit and talking head and I knew when you set yourself apart you find your tribe”.
So, the rapping realtor posted a music video chock full of real estate info in his lyrics, and people loved it.
Garnering over 18,000 followers on Instagram, Romano has found his tribe and is still adding to it.
The Cardi B Up video is one of the realtor’s favorite videos he’s made lyrics for and even brought in another agent to rap with him. The video soared to over 60,000 views. It was that moment when Romano realized making these rap real estate music videos was not only something he loved and wanted to do, but it meant growth.
“It was a huge networking opportunity, so instead of making a video once a month we bumped it up to once a week,” Romano said..
Of course, you can’t have success on the internet without a little criticism or drama.
“People have made the comment that I must not be doing much business if I have time to make these videos, but in all honesty, it takes an hour and this is the marketing part of my job,” Romano said. “These videos are how I sell myself to potential clients. The days of going home and turning off who you are at the end of the day are over. You have to keep branding yourself to keep growing and stay relevant. Clients want to work with someone they know, like, and trust so you are the business now.”
The latest episode of Riff On This goes into deeper detail about the video production and more stories from Romano’s time as a rapper.