SANTIGOLD RETURNS WITH ‘HIGH PRIESTESS,’ A ‘RAP PUNK’ SINGLE + ACCOMPANYING VIDEO SHORT.
Santigold hasn’t been heard from in a long time, but the versatile artist has finally returned with the new single “High Priestess” and accompanying video short. The song finds Santi reconnecting with her “own strength and purpose” as a method to reignite her powers, influenced by the debilitating constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, which included seclusion from her creative group.
“I had started working on this beat and I didn’t have anything in mind for a topic, I just knew I wanted to do a sort of rap punk song, as dangerous as that sounds,” Santi says in a press release. “My buddy Ray Brady and I started working on something, trying to add in all the elements that made sense: kicks, subs, new wave synths. Boys Noize ended up bringing something super cool that really built the song and made me get even more excited about it. It was coming along quickly, until it wasn’t.”
Santigold realized the “punk rock intensity and the anger” she wanted to portray wasn’t coming through after a jolt of doubt.
“I tried adding guitar and a live drum equipment, and it was a big red buzzer ‘X,” she continues. “I ended up tagging Psymun, who brought Ryan Olson in, and they were the final missing piece.” It couldn’t be the old punk rock intensity I was yearning for; it had to be the punk rock of the future. They offered the agitation, the push and pull that had been lacking, but in a very new and unexpected way.
“It all came together in ways I never could have envisioned when we first started, but it was precisely what I wanted to achieve.” I want to compose music that sounds like it belongs in both the past and the future; music that makes you feel safe enough to jump in, but then leads us on a journey to places we didn’t know we needed to go. “I want my music to serve as a link.”
Throughout the songwriting process, Santigold realized how much she missed collaborating with other musicians, or “a meeting of minds and souls,” as she defines it. This was brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began spreading in March 2020.
“I wrote this song during the pandemic two years ago and was desperate for this kind of connection,” she says. “I started working on it with Ray in my studio a few weeks before the first lockdown in 2020, but I was fully alone in a room after that.” I spent some time in a chamber at a cabin in the middle of the Canadian woods, entirely alone. However, technology was incredible because I felt like I was spending the entire time with these men.
“I wrote this song during the pandemic two years ago and was desperate for this kind of connection,” she says. “I started working on it with Ray in my studio a few weeks before the first lockdown in 2020, but I was fully alone in a room after that.” I spent some time in a chamber at a cabin in the middle of the Canadian woods, entirely alone. However, technology was incredible because I felt like I was spending the entire time with these men.
The mother of two, who had been in “mom-mode” for months, found peace in the cabin, which provided a welcome break from the never-ending demands of parenting.
She continues, “It actually saved my spirit.” “And that takes us to the song’s title. This song was titled ‘High Priestess’ since it was about my grandeur. I needed to be a witness to myself at that point, calling out my own strength, fortitude, and wisdom because I felt cut off from it, having been ripped from the rhythm of life I had created for myself and thrust into this smaller, one-dimensional version of myself, grounded and isolated for far too long. The words are amusing, as are most rap lyrics, boastful and smug, but that’s what I was talking about underlying it all.”
Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions, Santigold’s most recent album, was released in 2018. There’s more where “High Priestess” came from, I’m sure. Meanwhile, take a look at the video below.
