Last year, New York-based artist Santogold released one of 2007's defining records, a double A-sided 12" single. One side, Creator, was an ultra modern, digital call to arms produced by London-based producers Switch and Freq Nasty. The other, L.E.S Artistes, was a socking piece of power pop with a mile high chorus which NME made single of the week. Now the extraordinary talent behind both tracks is ready to deliver her debut album, and it turns out that the dizzying diversity of the single was just a taster for the main event. Santogold's eponymous first album is a collection which manages to be wildly eclectic without ever being incoherent. As sonically challenging and innovative a record as its roll call of cutting-edge collaborators (Diplo, Disco D, Sinden) would suggest, it reconfigures dub, pop, rock, and electronic influences into something new and intoxicating, then attaches them to nuclear-powered pop tunes. "People are definitely ready for stuff which doesn't fit into a genre," says Santogold, in real life Philadelphia-born musician Santi White. "I want to create music that reflects me and all my influences. My dad took me to see shows as a child, like I saw Nina Simone and Fela Kuti with his 27 naked wives onstage; my older sister was always playing Bad Brains, The Smiths and classic rock, and then at school people were listening to The Cure, U2 and Talking Heads. That's what is reflected in Santogold – influences from all over the place all mashed up into this style that is my own."
Having been a songwriter for hire for musicians including Lily Allen, Res and Ashlee Simpson, a singer in her own band Stiffed, and a guest vocalist (she sings The Jam's Pretty Green on her friend Mark Ronson's all-conquering album Versions), Santi White has paid her dues and then some. Her solo project began when she returned to New York after a period living in Philadelphia during which she lost her father to cancer. At that time, her father, as an advisor to the mayor, was under investigation as a target of the FBI's citywide "probe for municipal corruption". This was a traumatic time which lyrically inspired You'll Find A Way (incidentally, the remix of this song by Switch and Sinden, included on the album, was Björk's favourite record of last year – she also requested Santogold to support her on tour). Santogold's New York-assisted artistic rebirth is commemorated in the lyrics of L.E.S Artistes, though the song also casts a gimlet eye on the many poseurs and scenesters infesting the Lower East Side. New York is essential to Santogold's creative impetus. "Sometimes it can be too much, and it's grating and it's too hard. If you're feeling delicate it's not the place, but if you're you're fuelled by that there's nowhere else in the world like it, and that's where I think I am right now." She currently lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, a neighbourhood depicted in her song Unstoppable. "It's kind of rough but it's got these amazing brownstones, so all these artists are living there. M.I.A has her house a block away from me, and our friend Tyler from !!! lives down the street. At the same time, there are six dudes on the corner at any given time so every time you walk by you're getting harassed, like "Damn! Look at that ass!" And there's chicken bones thrown in the street and liquor stores and churches everywhere. And sometimes there are gunshots… so there's a lot to write about."
Santogold's main collaborator on the album is John Hill, a producer and songwriter who used to play bass with Stiffed. As for the slightly more familiar names, White and hot DJ/producer Diplo (M.I.A, Beck, Bloc Party), who produced Unstoppable and My Superman (with John Hill), "had so many friends in common that we knew who each other were and knew all each other's business". He in turn introduced Santogold to Switch. The late hip-hop producer Disco D (50 Cent, Trick Daddy) worked on the sarcastic protest song Shove It, transforming it from a dub record into an uncategorisable future pop song by applying a "snap" hip hop beat. Yet it's the sheer songwriting chops that really impress, for instance on the swooping I'm A Lady, which Santogold accurately describes as "Johnny Cash meets Cocteau Twins – and it's quite Joan Armatrading as well". The song – "about being a woman, obviously, and refusing to accept what's handed to you" – reverses the Fela Kuti song Lady, "totally dissing western women and how they don't wear skirts and talk back to their men" and features Santogold's boyfriend Trevor 'Trouble' Andrew, a musician and professional snowboarder. "I love snowboarding," she enthuses formidably. "I love physical activities like paintballing and jetskiing, I love nature and I love the outdoors and doing physically challenging stuff." The wonderful Say Aha sets out over sparkling reggae horns Santogold's independently-minded credo: "having a voice of your own and thinking for yourself, not letting someone else define who you are". The bassline of Lights Out, meanwhile, nods to the Pixies under a pure pop chorus as irresistible as gravity. Then there's Anne, a song about drug addiction originally based around Kraftwerk's The Model until an inability to clear the sample threw spanner in the works. Currently being rewritten, the bootleg version may pop up soon on a mixtape Diplo and Santogold are currently constructing.
It's an extraordinary album from an extraordinary artist, whose cultural mash-up aesthetic extends all the way to the clothes she performs her songs in: "Vintage clothes, knock-off Gucci, sneakers and animal prints." Once her budget allows, Santogold will play live with a band, but for the moment she performs with a DJ and two wonderfully impassive female dancers, her take on Public Enemy's famous uniformed troupe the Security of the First World: "they're a real presence and they look amazing". After years of being pushed into pigeonholes (Stiffed floundered partly because people couldn't get their heads around the idea of a black woman singing rock) or playing second fiddle to lesser talents, Santogold has come into her own. For anyone who cares about original, quality, uncategorisable pop, 2008 will be a golden year.
