As much as I’m trying to listen to Jack White’s “Blunderbuss” and Garbage’s “Not Your Kind of People” I can’t seem to get past wanting to hear Santigold’s sophomore record “Master of My Make-Believe” over and over.
The opening track with Karen O. “Go” is the perfect album opener, grabs you and keeps you. It’s a crazy amalgam of 80’s music, Siouxsie and the Banshees meets Bow Wow Wow with some of the most inventive ‘background’ samples I’ve heard in a really long time.
The first single “Disparate Youth” has had me hooked for weeks. This isn’t a concept album. This is an album of extremes, of disparate sounds and styles and influences. Every song exists in a universe all it’s own, from the Kate Bush feel of “The Riots Gone” to the tribal hip hop of “Look At These Hoes” ., and they’re all brilliant.
I hope Santigold gets the respect and attention she more than deserves with this record. Her first record was fantastic but I suspect because she’s not easy to pigeonhole as ‘alternative’ or ‘dance’ or ‘hip hop’ the music industry didn’t know what to do with her. She’s the future of music but America is slow to catch on, it’s funny how everyone here thinks she’s from the UK or Europe. Are we so used to all young African-American women being Beyonce knockoffs? or mediocre rappers? is it unfathomable that a strong and talented artist should be able to mix her influences of old new wave music with reggae and African world beat or is it surprising because she’s young, black and female? Like I said she’s the future of music. A post-alternative, post-hip hop blend that’s both new and unexpected yet oddly familiar.
She defies categorization; and that is her great strength. The record is brilliant and so is she.