Identity

Connor Cassidy

Connor Cassidy is an American rapper & rock guitarist born & based in Massachusetts. His value-driven lyrics & cinematic sound have reached millions of people worldwide, and he’s currently in Nashville, TN working on his 2nd album. His major influences include Breaking Benjamin, John Mayer, Slipknot, Nas, 50 Cent, & many more.

ORIGINS

Connor Thomas Khalil Cassidy was born on Nov. 12th, 1995 to Tom and Joan Cassidy.

He was primarily raised in the small town of Norfolk, Massachusetts where his parents converted a run-down hunting lodge into a home. His father worked as a professor of education at Harvard University and a consultant for The World Bank, and his mother worked as a court reporter for the Boston court system.

Growing up in Massachusetts, Connor was steeped in the region’s unique and spirited culture, known more for its sports than its music. He discovered early in his life that he had a love of words & a passion for rhythm - writing his first songs in his early teenage years, and performing at bars & venues in Greater Boston by the age of 16, opening up for Machine Gun Kelly, Cory Gunz, Shwayze, & many more. The success & adrenaline of these shows fueled his ambition and inspired him forward.

After graduating high school, his prospects as a performer were disrupted: a polyp had formed on his vocal cords that limited the use of his voice & barred him from recording, performing, and even talking for extended periods. To bide his time, he accepted a scholarship at the University of Miami, FL to study finance & the music business. While there, he dove deeply into his newfound passions of meditation, boxing, philosophy, and guitar, and worked as an executive assistant for a Miami entrepreneur who started funding studio sessions for Connor to make beats, re-build his voice, and write for other artists. Two years into this experience, the rising MA rapper Kyle Bent asked Connor if he would move back to Boston and become his manager, and he accepted: transferring colleges to Northeastern University to help build Kyle’s career while continuing college.

Within 6 months, Kyle signed a record deal, completed an East Coast tour, banked over 1 million streams across DSPs, performed at the Boston Music Awards & First Night New Year’s celebration, and established a solid reputation as a front-runner in the Boston music scene. Connor now found himself as a rising artist manager and was approached by Universal Music Group for a college rep position, which he accepted. The position gave him backstage access to every UMG artist who came through the Greater Boston area, which opened doors to limitless inspiration and personal interactions with key industry players & rising artists: Avery Lipman, David Geffen, YG, The Stripes, Maggie Rogers, Lewis Capaldi, Jacob Banks, Khelani, Metro Boomin, etc. Through this experience, it became clear to him that his task was to heal his voice and re-establish himself as an artist.

Upon graduating college, he parted ways with Kyle and Universal & started writing songs, recording, gigging, and diving deeper into guitar, composing, and engineering. This led to his first single/visual release in many years, Guillotine, which spawned many more music videos: Family, City Lights, etc., and led to the release of his first album, PHEONIX. To fund these releases, he worked as a real estate, joined Tesla as a salesman, and drove Lyft. After the pandemic, he quit these jobs & moved to Nashville, TN to construct his second studio album, GODSPEED. He’s there right now, creating it.