Santi White, who records under the name Santogold, may or may not be the grooviest thing to happen to urban pop – a label I hate to use, but which seems wholly appropriate under the circumstances – since Gnarls Barkley. Like Gnarls, her self-titled debut record is wildly uncategorizable and just as wildly uneven, ranging from catchy new wave inspired pop songs to cosmic hip-hop hallucinations; and while she hasn’t quite acheived market saturation a la “Crazy”, her song debut single “Creator” – which sounds like a spaceship cruise through the Amazon rainforest just before the world ends – is proving to be a licensing bonanza, such to make Moby jealous, most notably used in a commercial for Bud Lime. But while it’s nice to hear “Creator” in heavy rotation, even if it must be in 30 second snips underneath a sports-commentator-style voice-over, it’s nothing compared to seeing her video for the single “L.E.S. Artistes”.
Mikey likes to talk about “WTF?” moments in music, and here’s one for sure. I first saw this video a couple months ago playing on the Logo Network’s “NewNowNext” show. I had fallen asleep in front of the TV and woke up in the middle of the night and there it was like a nightmare I had only half woken up from – a strange, simultaneous funny and disturbing meeting of violence and whimsy. Do you laugh out loud? Or do you avert your eyes? I’ve watched the video dozens of times – it’s one of the few current videos I actually wanted on my iPod bad enough to pay the two bucks for – and it still retains a sense of confrontation and surprise. Check it out:
A new “maxi-single” of the song was released on iTunes this week, featuring a pair of remixes and an instrumental version. The XXX Change Mix is my favorite, recasting the song as the kind of atmospheric new wave funk single that Heaven 17 might have put out in 1983.
