Song Exploder - Santigold - Ushers of the New World

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Santigold is a singer, songwriter, and producer. She’s put out 4 albums since 2008, and she’s been featured as a collaborator on songs with Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Diplo, and more. In this episode, Santi takes apart her song "Ushers of the New World," from her 2022 album Spirituals. She made it with some other collaborators she’s worked with before, including Grammy-winning producer Rostam, and producer Ricky Blaze. She told me about how she tries to channel her gut instincts, and how she wanted to transform some of the darkest feelings of 2020 into something galvanizing. For more, visit songexploder.net/santigold.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Santi Gold is a singer, songwriter, and producer. She's put out four albums since 2008, and she's been featured as a collaborator on songs with Jay-Z, The Beastie Boys, Diplo, and more. In this episode, Santi takes apart her song Usher's of the New World, from her 2022 album, Spirituals. She made it with some other collaborators she's worked with before. including Grammy-winning producer Rostom and producer Ricky Blaze. She told me about how she tries to channel her gut instincts

and how she wanted to transform some of the darkest feelings of 2020 into something galvanizing. My name is Sonti Gold. This song started with an email from Ricky Blaze, who I first met through Diplo back in, like, 2010. I remember Diplo being like, hey, there's this young producer, and he lives in Brooklyn, but he's family's Jamaican,

and I think you really like his music. So I met him, and we ended up doing the song Disparate Youth together. So I got an email, and he was like, hey, here's some new tracks, let's check out. And I was tired. But for some reason, I was just like, before I go to bed, let me just hit play. It was basically just a loop with a little bit of drums and some synths.

What I liked about the initial track from Ricky is it's got this really slow, like almost push and pull. Like it almost sounds like it's sluggish. We feel like you're moving through somewhere. And the way it spoke to me was like an urgency about the future, but it felt really soft, like a very gentle conversation about the urgency.

And I was like, whoa. When that happens, I have to record something immediately. If I have an impulse, I just quickly just record straight away on the computer. This is like This is so wrong as an analogy But like if you're about to throw up And you're like, I need a trash can right now Because you know it's coming

And you have to have the thing right then Or else you miss it I'm like the sloppiest music maker ever I don't care about the quality of my recording I just want the idea So I get my little headphones And I just sing a melody So then the next step is very strange

I literally write down what it sounds like the gibberish is saying. I listen to back and I'm like, what does it sound like? And it's words that don't exist and I'll write them down. But then what I do is I go about trying to fill in the gibberish words with the real words that actually fit with the same rhythm, obviously, the same consonants. It's really like a puzzle. Sometimes there's a couple words that do exist and I'll write them down like, good God, it makes me sick, sound like a saying that. Well, I like that line. Let's keep it.

It makes me sick. I can feel a weight of it on this in the winter fly. I carry too much inside. There is definitely protests taking place when I wrote this, and I was looking to kind of rise above, not in an escapist way, but in a way so I could see forward, in a way that gave me peace and hope in a time that felt really hopeless. The pandemic had already begun.

There was mixed messaging that was coming about, like, people's safety and just wanting to keep the economy going. Just really not putting people in our well-being first. Spend your money, take their hit while you gather they are far, risk it all to save their day. I had insomnia, like, really bad. And I was having trouble processing it all and knowing what to do. This time if I'm a make it, we got a ticket and we're running side by side. We have to work together.

There's no way towards the future that we want if we're not going to build it together. I did have to work on that chorus a bit. The first thing I came up with was the, Your time is up. You see we're coming. It's all the world. And I was like, oh, I like that.

But then I had this other idea that was ushers of. We're the ushers of the new world. And then I was like, ooh, they can go together. Your time is up. You see. With the ushers are the world, the underworld, we're going to make it right. My mom's church, so she went to, I'm from Philadelphia, and her church was really boring, and I did not like going. But my dad's family was from Baltimore, and his grandmother was a pastor at this church, and then his aunt was the organist.

And I love this church in Baltimore. We didn't go that often, but when we went, wow, it was such an event. It was like the ushers in white and the people be catching spirit and holy ghost and jumping up and speaking in tongues and fainting and the ushers would grab them and fan them. It was exciting. And so there was this image that just kept coming back to me for this record of these ushers all in white holding up this person as they're transcending, as they're just beyond, you know, outside of their bodies and just going to another dimension. We're the ushers of the new world. We are the ones that are going to bring the new world that we want to live in. Being locked up in your house, it was getting increasingly hard to balance all the demands of being a mom because I had three kids.

My twins had just turned two. So I wasn't like, I'm going to get up and work on a song today. You know, it was more like, I just got to get out of here. So at some point, I was like, I'm going to record this whole album. My family ended up going to Canada. we actually drove up to Canada in an RV. And we went to Squamish, which was in British Columbia. We intended to only stay for like eight weeks.

We ended up staying there for five months. And I ended up shipping my music equipment out and renting a cabin in the woods where I really got into working on the record. And so by then we had a babysitter. You know, my mom also came. So I was able to actually go to work for like, you know, a good eight hours a day sometimes. I realized that making the music was,

me weaving my own lifeline during this time. So I think being in Canada, in particular, in finishing the music of the song, really helps solidify where I wanted to go with the production. And I worked with producers virtually. I called Rostom, who I'd known since he was in Vampire Weekend in the beginning, and who I've worked with before, he's one of my favorite people to work with.

And Rostom did a lot. The baseline there, That's Rostom. He added drums. We used a lot of Ricky's original drums too. You know, I grew up listening to a lot of like Filakuti and stuff like that where it's just like you've got all these parts coming in, but it's not necessarily big chord changes.

It's just like you're adding parts and then things fall out and then the rhythm changes. And so I tend to bring vocal elements like I just build and so that it feels like you've entered a different space. But then when we got to the, bridge, I'm like, it's a little boring. It just needs a little thing. I ended up having a producer named Simon that I worked with, go through the song and see if there's anything that you can do. And what I learned about Simon is he's like a vocal genius. Like he can do all kinds of crazy,

cool things with your vocals and make them feel like instruments. And he did a couple things, but that's the thing I kept because I was like, I love that right here. You can't understand what it's saying, but you feel it. I often use multiple producers on one track because sometimes what I'm looking for is beyond what just I can do and it's beyond what just one producer can do. And it's the actual merging of all the different skill sets that makes it what it is. And I think that that is kind of key to what makes Asante Gold song a lot of the time is being able to bring different people in to bring these little special skills to a song. Sometimes when you're working with people that do a lot of pop music, it's like the transition. into the chorus. They'll be like always put the same type of, shoo, sound. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to hear

that. I'm like, why don't we put some like, you know, atmosphere or like Marvin Gay when he's got the party in the background and stuff like that? I love the idea of putting some environment, not some fake environment, like put some people in there, put some environment as a lift. I love group vocals. A lot of my vocals I record as if I'm a group. I'll do like multiple vocals and don't make them very tight because I wanted to sound like I'm several women. And I don't have one of those African-American gospel, you know, traditional voices. I don't sing like that. To me, when I hear the African women or the Jamaican women, I'm like, that's my voice.

I'm like them, which is a different style of singing, a different style of vocalizing. Because time is up, you see, we come. With the ashes of the world, the new world, we're going to make you right. I make songs about social issues, and that's partially because of the music I grew up listening to. I grew up listening to music about change, whether it was Marvin Gay, whether it was Nina Simone, whether it was Salmpeper and Queen Latifah. That music was about change. That's what I learned music was growing up. And so this is a rally cry.

This is a song about the need for us to come together. create the future that we need. This is a protest. Like we're using our voice. We're fighting for the things that matter. It's not like, hey, it's only us and not them. It can be everybody because it needs to be. It needs to be all of us.

If you can understand what I'm saying and if you can feel the urgency and the necessity of us being able to salvage what we've got here and make it work, that's who I'm singing to. And now here's Usher's of the New World by Sonti Gold. entirety. Visit songexplotor.net slash santigold for more information. You can find links to buy or or stream Usher's of the New World. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about

15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in

April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Kleeon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website,

rishikesh.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder and the show's theme music were created by me. I produced this episode with Craig Ely, with artwork by Carlos Lerma, music clearance by Kathleen Smith, and production assistants from Mary Dolan. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Heirway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.