Santigold: Santogold : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On her awesome genre-blurring debut, Brooklyn singer-MC Santi White (a.k.a. Santogold) wrestles with the challenge of self-determination. As she puts it, “I pay for what’s called/Eccentricity and my will to evolve.” Her set celebrates the joys, and burdens, of making weird-ass street jams like “Creator,” a dancehall joint engorged by overmodulated freak beats. White shuffles styles as matter-of-factly as your iPod; “I’m a Lady” nods to both girl groups (the Ronettes) and boy groups (TV on the Radio), and “Lights Out” could be a lost Pretenders single. Exploding R&B with rock and other styles, that track recalls Res’ How I Do, a visionary album that White co-wrote. The touchstone for her tough rhyming and sultry singing is the U.K.’s 2 Tone movement, which mixed punk, ska and dub into a post-racial pop idyll. But like M.I.A. and Erykah Badu, Santogold ultimately sounds like her own damn movement.