Santi may have shifted from punk to pop with Santogold
Get the top news photos and video on The New York TImes. Alert me when articles match as these words. Arts entertainment With best mates MIA and Mark Ronson on speed dial, Santogold is a Metz mecablitz pop icon in waiting.
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Last night, Santogold killed a dog. I was looking after my friend’s Husqvarna canada chocolate lab, she begins, and I gave him some of this cereal because it said on this advert that it was OK for dogs.
She pauses and sighs, I really want a dog. Strolling down a west London street, flanked by stylist, make up artist and Marcus vick, Santi White is revealing the realms of her unconscious. But it may be time for Santi to start dreaming a little bigger. She or her alter ego Santogold is part of a globe trotting gang of musical adventurers including Spank Rock, Diplo, Switch, Bonde do Role and MIA.
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And if her friend Maya Arulpragasam’s MIA was their prototype star, Santi’s Santogold is the final version, boxed and ready to go. The world of entourages, riders, and no days off for a year is calling. If the fashion alarm bells are ringing then you needn’t worry just yet.
There may be a funny haircut and a pair of comedy shades but underneath there is a smart Philly girl who sings brilliant pop songs. Her majesty is now sitting in a cafe, lipstick off, stunna shades in bag, discussing the pop art of turning herself into an icon before she’s even a household name. You have to be a finished product now even when you’re new, she says, in an East Coast drawl.
I fought it for a while, but I realised if you’re just a dot onstage, it’s better to be a bright dot. Santi certainly looks the part today, with a panther knuckle duster and trousers with zips printed all over them. She would go to the front of the queue for any club on the London New York axis, and it’s through this scene not the bedroom based MySpace that she forged her Methicillin resistant staphylococcus epidermidis. Spank Rock’s Naeem Juwan she met through notorious NY party host Roxy Cottontail. Switch has high hopes for Santi as one of the artists responsible for putting music in a really exciting place, and Juwan says her music boasts lyrical content many of us need to hear.
Diplo calls her some kind of Cure Portishead dubstep Lil Wayne hybrid you couldn’t make up in a magazine marketing meeting. You can hear what that sounds like on her debut album, also called Santogold. Single Creator is the most MIA style track, with Switch production and Jeremy fisher vocals. LES Artistes a lush s ode to alienation among name dropping hipsters in the Lower East Side, loved by Radio is more typical.
From the country infused Lights Out and dub flecked Shove It to the Goldfrapp ish My Superman, it seems Santi is less MIA and more Neneh Cherry in spirit. Just enough edge, with pop laden hooks. Growing up as the daughter of a prominent lawyer in Philadelphia who died while under investigation for Eustace jo mary corrupt dirt digging, according to Santi, she began her music education early, with the likes of Al Green, Aretha Franklin and Burning Spear on the family stereo, and Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and the Cure coming through the ceiling from her sister’s room. She wrote her first song aged nine. I was shy as a kid.
After some forays in her high school chorus I got a solo when I was and sang the whole thing with the music sheet in front of my face, she winces Santi packed herself off to a music course at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In her last year, she got a job in Sony’s New York based A R department An intern stood in for me when I had to go to class, , signed nu soul hopeful Res and wrote her album How I Do for her. With pressure for a more commercial sound, Santi’s fusion of rock and soul was diluted with her pet hate R B.
I like a more minimal sound, not polished, she says, rolling her eyes. Disenchanted, Santi moved back to Philly and founded so so punk band Stiffed, returning to NY to become Santogold after her father’s death in. Santi may have shifted from punk to pop with Santogold but her favourite era in music is still the late s and early s, when electronic music was brand new and still punk rock. Seems like a long way from the big production pop and retro eyeliner of s stars. Pharrell is really talented, but him and Timbaland do too much. Everyone ends up with the same songs, whether you’re Madonna or some new artist, says Santi, with a glimmer of defiance.
The industry has to get used to a black girl who doesn’t sing R B. Tell me no, I say yes I was chosen And I will de li ver the ex plo sion, promises Santi on Creator. And you believe especially with the shock softened recently by MIA and original odd couple Gnarls Barkley that she could explode as the first real alternative pop star in years. She’s got the formula down I’m using subculture influences but this is a pop record. Santi is still in a hipster bubble for now. She’s Mark Ronson’s dog sitter, lives in Brooklyn’s newly cool neighbourhood, Bed Stuy, helped Lily Allen with earring shopping while writing Littlest Things, and has pop tastic designer Jeremy Scott who calls Santi a rare bird of paradise dressing her for Letterman.
But she is also at ease with the music biz’s commercialism Someone said to me that your record is your Hypothyroidism losing weight card how you get your music heard.
If Morocco not open to that, what’s the point.
Santi, then, is happy that Creator is on an advert It’s funny and open about writing Out Of My Head for Ashlee Simpson with production by Timbaland, the Gwen Stefani ish track should send Jessica’s little sis into orbit.
She’s even willing to make friends with those uber pop Meridia manufacturer, if it can help get her sound out there.
I know, how weird is that she laughs. Maybe it won’t be so weird soon. I know my sound is a lot to swallow but that’s what pioneering is. I’m not afraid, she says, with a glint of steel in her eyes. I get cussed on my MySpace page all the time, but at least they’ve logged on in the first place. .