We’ll be doing the actual M.I.A. single next week, but until then…

[Video][Website]
[6.15]

Katherine St Asaph: IT’S LIKE NOBODY’S HEARD THE WORD “GAGA” BEFORE, JESUS. Anyway, now that that non-news is out of the way (yeah, yeah, the mermaid in the video, I don’t care), if the million addled soprano 2s or the beat here doesn’t make you fling yourself into a dance routine, you are missing some crucial pleasure drivers on the brain disk. If you can, hear it live (right now, DJ sets count); if you’re still stock-still, you’re probably just broken.
[9]

Anthony Easton: Why isn’t the word “débutante” used more in hip-hop? Has it ever been?
[7]

Pete Baran: Santigold is basically the pop Leibniz to M.I.A.’s Sir Isaac Newton. Her legacy may just be to have a better biscuit named after her.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Oooh! It’s ethnic!
[2]

Brad Shoup: Listening to Santoigold always gives me — how to say? — a case of the duck rocks. If it weren’t for the conflated Gaga bullshit (take a bow, content farmers!), I wonder if we’d still perceive that under all the kuduro and copypasta, this is essentially a hype flamewar. But that’s not really something I ought to be concerned with. And anyway, last time I checked, See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy was one of the ten best records ever released, and Annabella Lwin was all about throwing dweebs against the wall to see how far they’d bounce back. So, as ever, I’ve got no real clue what’s being presented, but the track is a bullet train of indignance.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Tinnitus in three minutes, suggestive of nothing so much as a fly buzzing around your ears, or the production of “Get Ur Freak On” sped up and played underwater. If M.I.A. were half as musically artsy as she thinks she is, or half as clever as Gwen Stefani, she’d make this record. That’s not an endorsement.
[4]

John Seroff: The important thing to understand about Santigold’s new single is that it is Massive, by which I do not mean it is sprawling or big or good, although it is all those things. It is Massive in the sense that “Rude Boy” and “Countdown” and “My Girls” and “Year of the Ox” are; it is overpowering on first contact, does not dull and only comes to rest as an echoing thunder. Thematically, “Big Mouth” is indistinguishable from “Stupid Hoe” but where the latter provides no more than harridan’s chatter and quickening cycles of mechanical exhaust, the former arrives in a Doppler cloud, introduces itself with near abstracted vocals and promptly launches into neatly urban tribal drums and Massive choir. The easy analogue is M.I.A. but I’m hearing more Bjork: robust, pseudo-primitive and assertively personal. You can really hear the village it took to raise the song.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: It’s hard for me to find any joy in Santigold’s work; it always seems too calculated, too overly-engineered to please. This track’s no different. The whole proceedings are ruined by the throwaway Gaga diss, which is a shame, because the infectious beat and snide chants are otherwise charming.
[4]

Sally O’Rourke: I wouldn’t have predicted in 2008 that I’d be anticipating the next Santigold album more than the new M.I.A., but a lot can happen in four years. If Santigold’s looking to shake off those comparisons, though, maybe “Big Mouth” isn’t the canniest track to pick — it just makes her proclamations of her own creativity (Santi’s favorite topic) ring even more hollow. Which is a shame, because “Big Mouth” is brimming with ideas and a visceral sense of menace. The stammering verses impress a little less once you’ve heard “We Stay Up All Night,” but the chorus roars by in a frenzy that more than makes up for them. Ghoulish hoots set the nightmare scene, intensifying into a clattering clamor that threatens to trample the next track on your playlist. If “Big Mouth” is the equivalent of “Creator” (worldbeat-ish premiere track that ends up being one of the album’s weaker spots), then I may as well name Master of My Make-Believe my album of 2012.
[9]

Kat Stevens: I know I am going to get roundly mocked for saying this but… I think I preferred Santigold when she was indie.
[4]

Jer Fairall: I doubt that even M.I.A. wants to be M.I.A. this badly.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Now that M.I.A.’s two albums removed from KALA, having travelled through Skinny Puppy into the land of Chris Brown and the Cataracs, someone needs to be making soundtracks for electro kuduro raves. If this is the sound of the ‘o’-less Santigold, I’ll miss the dubbier side of things (cf. “Anne,” “L.E.S. Artistes,” “Unstoppable”) but at this stage Santi’s doing this better than anyone else, Maya included.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: Why are you so petrified of silence, Big Mouth? Here, can you handle this? (Cue wordless vocal fx building to EXCRUCIATING LOUDNESS YAWP!) Tick tock tock that shit nonstop — you’re such a shit talker, RUN! yaMOUTH! MORE! THANANYONEI’VEEVERKNOWN! You’re everywhere I go, thinkin’ that you know, O Big Mouth, Big Mouth, mymymy you’ve said enough. You talk too much; you even worry my pet! (Cue wordless chirps and shrieks.) GaGaGa all slighty off; not me, I’ll take the loss, I’ll never talk again, you’ve left me speechless, so speechle-ye-ye-yes. (Boobooboo, boobooboo, boobooboo, boobooboo…) Hey, um, Big Mouth… why you so speechless?
[9]