Fantano was born in Connecticut, on October 28, 1985. He spent his teenage years in Wolcott. As a child, he had a desire to become a cartoonist because of The Simpsons.
Career
Fantano started his career in the mid-2000s as a music director for the Southern Connecticut State University college radio station. In 2007, Fantano started working at Connecticut Public Radio in which he hosted The Needle Drop. That same year, he launched The Needle Drop in the form of written reviews, eventually launching his series of video reviews in early 2009, starting with a Jay Reatard record. Fantano's review for Flying Lotus' 2010 album Cosmogramma appearing next to other Flying Lotus videos in YouTube's "Featured Videos" section gave him the "hint" to continue making video reviews. In 2010, Fantano took down older reviews that contained music clips in order to avoid DMCA violations. At the time, he was working on The Needle Drop at the college radio station, as well as at a pizza restaurant. In late 2011, he decided to pursue The Needle Drop full-time, but kept affiliation with WNPR until 2014. He was interviewed at SXSW in 2011 about the rise of music vlogging, along with Matt Galloway of the Rock It Out! blog and Michael Roffman, president and editor-in-chief of Consequence of Sound. In March 2011, he was featured in an article from The Guardian also about the rise of music vlogging. The Needle Drop won the 2011 O Music Awards in the "Beyond the Blog" category. Fantano was offered an album review show on Adult Swim but did not go through with it. Fantano had a cameo in Lil Nas X's video for the Young Thug and Mason Ramsey remix of "Old Town Road", appearing as a worker for the Area 51 military installation.
Response from other media
In order to earn enough money to pay his editor Austin Walsh, by November 2016, Fantano had recorded more regularly on a secondary YouTube channel, "thatistheplan", on which he reviewed memes and recorded "often irreverent videos that don't fall into the record review format," according to SPIN. In October 2017, an article in The Fader accused Fantano of promoting alt-right and racist sentiments in videos on "thatistheplan". Fantano was criticized for the use of Pepe the Frog memes, targeting feminists, and belittling the work of black musicians. Fantano produced a video response calling the critical article a "hit job." He disputed accusations of far right sympathies and stated that the videos in question were "satirical". The article was later deleted by The Fader, with both parties saying that the claims were settled. When asked about the merits of Fantano's reviews, Robert Christgau—admittedly 'barely recognizing' Fantano's name and having only 'glanced over' his Wikipedia page—said in 2019, "he seems to have arrived at a plausible brand of 21st-century rockcrit taste."
Personal life
Fantano and his wife, Dominique Boxley, reside in Middletown, Connecticut. He is an atheist and a vegan, having swapped to the diet after first going vegetarian in his late teens.
