Santi “Santogold” White is ruffling a few feathers by saying that people tagging her music as hip-hop and/or R & B are engaging in racist behavior, i.e. placing a genre on her music without really listening to it. Dropping the “r” word is always going to cause people to take up arms, and indeed, there are some fans of hip-hop who see this quote as Santogold turning her back on the genre. But is she dissing hip-hop and R & B, or is she fed up with lazy music categorizers who feel compelled to put every piece of music they hear into an iTunes-approved genre, and who sometimes rely on superficial characteristics like, say, the color of an artist’s skin in order to get to that end?
The quote in question, via The Lipster:
“It’s racist (laughs). It’s totally racist. Everyone is just so shocked that I don’t like R&B. Why does R&B keep coming into my interviews? It’s pissing me off. I didn’t grow up as a big fan of R&B and, like, what is the big shocker? It’s stupid. In the beginning I thought that was funny. I’m an ‘MC’, I’m a ’soul singer’, I’m a ‘dance hybrid artist’. And some guy said I looked like Kelly Rowland!”
What’s funny is that I’ve had a similar groan-and-eyeroll reaction to people who draw direct comparisons between Santogold’s sound and that of M.I.A.; sure, the two use a lot of the same producers and have similar visual aesthetics, but single listens to both Kala and Santogold starkly reveal that the two artists are coming from really different places. (I think I’ve said this before, but the first time I heard “L.E.S. Artistes” I thought I was listening to a Tegan & Sara dance remix, and their sound is pretty far from anything M.I.A.’s ever done during her solo career.) In this highly categorical pop-music world–and given that Santogold’s on a major label, which is definitely still operating in old-guard mode as far as playing to radio formats, etc., goes–more often than not, the genre that an artist is slotted into is based on factors that go way beyond the music. Given that she has a fairly intimate knowledge of the inner workings of majors, and that she’s probably been watching her fine album get pitched to outlets that it’s utterly wrong for, I suspect that the old practice of slotting music into boxes is what Santogold is decrying (seriously, how on earth does she look like Kelly Rowland!?), and not hip-hop as an entity.
Santogold and the genre problem [The Lipster via The Rap-Up via ProHipHop]
The comparison with M.I.A. isn’t that crazy if you’ve only heard, say, “Creator” … which might be the most high-profile track from the album, given its inclusion in a beer commercial.
It’s funny, I faced exactly this dilemma when ripping the Santogold CD to iTunes last week. I hate “Genre” tagging, but I usually comply enough not to leave it blank (and I try to pick the broadest/least specific label possible). So what, I asked myself, exactly is this album?
In the end, I think I went with the all-purpose “Alternative & Punk,” even though it’s meaningless, just to have something on there. In fact, if memory serves - this should make Santi happy - I think that’s what Gracenote suggested in the first place. (I often overrule Gracenote, but in this case I think I left it alone.)
P.S. As I said last week, if Santi wants not to be compared to M.I.A. she should refrain from recording any more obvious homages like that “Creator” track.
Santogold is on an indie in the States — she’s on Downtown, distributed through ADA. She is on a major in the UK, however (Atlantic).
I love her record and I think she’s rad as fuck, but I also think she’s kind of complicit in some of this. She can dress however she wants, but if you run around looking like a member of a losing paintball team and rocking fur coats, people will process that a certain way. She’s also spent plenty of time hanging, posing, and playing music with MIA — I get that they are probably buds and all, and throwing your friend under a bus is hard, but it might have been a wise move to distance herself.
Didn’t this chick used to work in the A&R department at Epic?
The M.I.A. comparison isn’t lazy — it’s pretty damned accurate.
@owenmeany: one *song* (remember songs?) may resemble m.i.a., but it’s the weakest song on the album. the rest of it sounds like it was inspired by cyndi lauper and missing persons.
@CortneyH: isn’t downtown a subsidiary of atlantic?
downtown is a major subsidiary fyi
those cold war kids records didn’t sell themselves
@CortneyH: Is it throwing a friend under the bus to say that there are few musical similarities between their two albums? It’s not as though she said “MIA is making shit and my record is solid gold [ha. ha.].”
@owenmeany: Yeah, and she wrote Res’s “How I Do”, which was basically the furthest thing from contemporary R&B when it was released but was marketed as such and flopped on a massive scale as a result.
How is the MIA comparison accurate, either musically or contextually? I’m really curious.
Downtown has an upstreaming deal with Atlantic but can choose to distribute their artists through ADA (indie distro). The Gnarls record was upstreamed to Atlantic but acts like Spankrock and Kid Sister will probably stay on Downtown with indie distro.
It’s a fuzzy line, but Santogold doesn’t have the Atlantic resources behind her in the States (yet, anyway). I can guarantee that you’d be hearing a lot more of her on radio and MTV if she had the Atlantic promo shop working her.
@CortneyH: umm… split hairs much? ada is controlled by wea. sure they distribute a bunch of indie labels but they are NOT indie themselves. it would seem the choice of distribution channels is be more about which angle will work better for which record.
You know, she’s definitely an artist that transcends labels like hip-hop or whatever, she’s not really helping matters too much by going on Conan baked up by two dancing backup signers and a DJ.
[www.redlasso.com]
I like to think this is what constitutes “Pop” these days. I may be fooling myself, but I like to think it anyway.
Triple the LES Artistes Tegan & Sara reference. I haven’t got The Con yet, so I just thought it was their new single.
I’m getting lazy in my old age.
LoL at indie.
I think the album is Pop as hell, in a great way.
It’ll be a crime if “Light’s Out” isn’t the next single. It’s a total summer radio song, the kind I used to hope to hear on my boombox radio at the beach.
And speaking of radio, how on earth does L.E.S. Artists fit on the playlist on WRXP? I love it when it pops up, but it’s so out of place.
i definitely hear more of nelly furtado (#2/12), siouxsie sioux (#6) and tango in the night-era fleetwood mac (#7) than MIA. also, i own the cd, so i don’t know any of the song titles because the font on the back is so silly.
Hey, this just popped up on emusic. Sounds like new wave revivalism for the most part, definitely not hiphop or R&B. And “My Superman” is really Siouxsie-like. The verses remind me of “Red Light” in particular.
@CortneyH: I gotta say that it seems like she has serious promotional push behind her. I’m not seeing a lack of hype from anywhere. She’s pretty much all over the place.
see, i actually thought the song in the beer commercial was M.I.A., and totally told other people i thought this was so, and no one ever corrected me. so the real loser in this whole mess is me, because now i look and feel like a jerk.
also, can’t we all just agree to call everything “new wave” and be done with it?
every time i hear l.e.s. artists, i still totally think it’s tegan and sara. glad i’m not the only one.