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 Rishikesh Herway.

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, Spirits Rules.

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 Santi Gold.

My name is Santi Gold.

This song started with an email from Ricky Blaze, who I first met through Diplo back in 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 Dispute 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, let me just, 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.

It almost sounds like it's sluggish.

You 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.

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