Jeremy Scott’s Cartoon Savannah

Jeremy Scott’s first collection for Adidas, released earlier this year, was a glittery-gold selection of irresistibly cut (wearable) harem pants, sequins, sporty fringed tanks and coveted winged hightops. His next installment abandons his black-gold-and-silver, Studio 54 color palette for a hue explosion and elongation of the tribal streetwear trend pioneered by MIA and Cassette Playa. Leopard-spotted sweatshirts, global mapped bodycon dresses and “tribal mask”-printed, exposed-pocket track suits all make appearances in this eminently watchable video collaboration with the video director Nabil. Appropriately, The Very Best, Esau Mwamwaya, MIA and Santigold soundtrack the trampoliney splashing around his collection apparently demands.

Freeload: Santigold f. Gucci Mane “Unfreakable Girl” + “Still Tippin’ It”

Santigold, Slim Thug and Gucci Mane all occupy large swaths of the FADER Master Computer’s hard drive so when we heard these unofficial collabs off Terry Urban’s banned Southerngold mixtape, we didn’t really have a choice but to put them up. The rest of that tape, which you can find pretty easily, is not as kosher, just some clumsy mash-ups of recent classic Southern rap (”Go Crazy,” “Still Tippin’” etc) and Santi’s debut album instrumentals, but these two sound legit. Maybe Atlantic will hear these and hire Major Lazer to produce Gucci’s next album.



Download: Santigold f. Gucci Mane “Unfreakable Girl”



Download: Santigold f. Slim Thug & Mike Jones “Still Tippin’ It”

FADER TV: Major Lazer (Live at the Levi’s®/FADER Fort)

For the premiere performance of the thoroughly amazing Major Lazer at The Levi’s®/FADER Fort
on Saturday, our heroes Switch and Diplo employed a rogue cast and crew to ramp up their mondo mutant dancehall rave, including a bunch of Mad Decent man-cheerleaders tossing out t-shirts like the mascots at a Sixers game, and our girl Desiree dressed in a mummy costume wining, fan-kicking and generally hyping the crowd. As you can see, it was a crazy dance party. We were sweating profusely but we brought our best moves.

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Santogold Becomes Santigold, Soon to be Santegold, Santugold, Santagold, Sometimes Santygold

Between The Muslims changing to Soft Pack, Santa’s Party House becoming Santo’s and now this, it has been a bad year for good names, though we can understand not wanting to incur the litigious wrath of this dude. Santi/o, we got you no matter what your name is.

Freeload: Three 6 Mafia f. Project Pat & Santogold, “Shuv It”

Some bloggers are already postulating that the recent trend of rappers rapping over MIA and Santogold samples could be “one of the lowest points in hip hop.” To us, it seems more like the recent trend of bloggers complaining about what rappers like Jay-Z and T.I. are allowed to do sounds a lot like when pre-bloggers complained about what rappers like Jay-Z and T.I. were allowed to do in 1999. For reference, read this sad tale about Def Jux. Is it really that big a deal? PS- We still fuck with hip-house and snap when appropriate.



Download: 3-6 Mafia f. Project Pat + Santogold, “Shuvit” (Via Mad Decent)

Video: Jay-Z, “Brooklyn Go Hard”

This video, created by graphic artist Evan Roth (and open sourced here), is pretty neat and all, but more importantly, it has encouraged us to listen to the song several more times and actually engage with how good it is. When we talked to Kanye for our cover story, we asked him about his production on Jay’s new album, wondered whether he was going to try to get Hov to go weird. He answered:

I think certain of Jay’s records were perfect for his fans and perfect for big stadiums, and it’s just finding those. It’s like, “What You Know” comes once in a blue moon, but I just try to set the studio to blue moon so I get ten of those.

Is “Brooklyn Go Hard” as good as “What You Know”? Our hearts say no, but we put it on last night and realized how serious it really is, especially Jay’s Weezy-ish squeaky island cadence in the opening lines and the general sense that he may not ask Kanye to give him 808’s-like beats but that their collaboration might inspire Jay to do things he has not done in a while, like sound excited. Or not, maybe he’ll just poop out a brick, but at least he got us speculating again.

Roth’s video was created for (RED)’s new (RED)Wire site, a new exclusive music subscription service in which half of all $5 monthly membership fees go directly to The Global Fund to help buy and administer medicine to people in Africa living with HIV. Some other artists involved include Coldplay, The Killers, Cat Power and, of course U2.

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Freeload: Jay-Z f. Santogold, “Brooklyn (Go Hard)”

For the last couple years, Jay-Z has watched over Brooklyn from a massive rooftop Rocawear billboard next to the Manhattan Bridge. If you’re in a cab or a car on your way into the city, seeing his face right before you cross the river is like a thumbs up from Pops before heading out onto the court. It gets you a little psyched to go do your thing in a way that a sign signed by borough president Marty Markowitz cannot (Thanks for the bike lanes though, Marty.) At the same time it’s like, Dude, can we get a pair of boots for under a 120 bones? Regardless, this new song off the Notorious soundtrack lets us know that Jay also represents Williamsburg by not only sampling FADER 51 coverstar Santogold (or letting Kanye sample her) but letting her grab a verse towards the end.



Download: Jay-Z, “Brooklyn (Go Hard)”

Update: Dirty Version (via Nah Right)

Freeload: Santogold, “Shove It (Switch Remix)”

If years of listening to Mad Professor albums taught us anything, it’s that the dub remix is a thing of subtlety. If a couple years of listening to Switch remixes has taught us another thing, it’s that he has little respect for subtlety. And yet, his remix of Santi’s dubby album cut is absolutely subtly dubbier, to the point where we had to double-check to make sure he actually did anything to earn his fee. RCRD LBL has it up to celebrate their 1st birthday, so go over there and give them the gift of ad revenue by downloading this jawn for free.


Download: Santogold, “Shove It (Switch Remix)”

Freeload: Esau Mwamwaya f. MIA & Santogold, “Get It Up”

One of the best moments on Santi and Diplo’s Top Ranking mixtape is the blend of Tony Matterhorn’s “Big Belly Guns” into a new jawn called “Get It Up” remixed by our friends in Radioclit. The only weird thing about the latter being Gorilla Zoe’s verse from “Hood Nigga” dropped right up front. We’re not saying that it was a bad idea, but Radioclit’s new version (just posted at Mad Decent) sans Zoe plus Esau is pretty crazy. We hear the recording sessions for Esau and Radioclit’s upcoming mixtape have been resulting in some wildness, so stay tuned for that.



Download: Esau Mwamwaya f. MIA & Santogold, “Get It Up”

Freeload: Santogold & Diplo, “Guns Of Brooklyn (Doc and Jon Hill Dub)”

Diplo and Santogold’s long-rumored Top Ranking mixtape recently and suddenly appeared on the shelves at Turntable Lab, so we walked down there and bought a copy. That copy, after one hour in the office, is already tattered, missing a CD and might possiby have some saliva on it. In other words, folks are excited, and rightly so because the shit is a banana boat on the Jawnongahela River and we are onboard. So we asked Diplo for a freebie and he sent us “Guns of Brooklyn” along with a little background of its recording. You can get a couple more free bonus cuts over at the Mad Decent blog, and if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to Mad Decent Worldwide Radio on iTunes.

I DJ’d Chung King’s Xmas party for free for some studio days in there. I never record bands so I need a full on place and help. I got Moose at Chung to open this day like a coupla hours in advance for us. We recorded this and a Bad Brains cover.

These are two songs that Santi used to do when she was in Stiffed, but we had to dooo mad takes on the screams at the end of the Bad Brains joint. And she accidently said “Brooklyn” instead of “Brixton” and we decided to use that version. Big thanks for Chuck Treece who came in from Philly and gave me a ride home that night.

ps. We also squeezed in two sessions with DJ Sega and Mizz Streamz where we did her vocals for a new 12″ on Ol Head/Mad Decent that’s gonna be big. All her family was there when Santi was recordin “Right Brigade” and they were like.. damn this black girls crazeeee.



Download: Santogold & Diplo, “Guns Of Brooklyn (Doc and Jon Hill Dub)”

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