Cruel Santino, "Mandy & The Jungle"
Tropical, introspective R&B for sheltering in bed on rainy days
Cruel Santino is Osayaba Andrew Ize-Iyamu, a Lagos native and member of the Nigeria-based Monster Boys music collective. He began releasing raps on Soundcloud in 2011 as Ozzy B, before switching to the name Santi circa 2013. As Santi, he dropped several more mixtapes that refined his hyper-chill fusion of hip-hop, dancehall, and neo-soul, eventually establishing himself as a key player in Nigeria’s alté scene. When that scene began to get international attention, Ize-Iyamu was frequently heralded as its headlining champion, becoming (along with Amaarae) one of the most visible ambassadors of Nigerian alternative music and fashion. Mandy & The Jungle was released in 2019 as Ize-Iyamu’s first studio album, and (perhaps following a call from Santigold’s legal team) his last under the name Santi. He’d return as Cruel Santino in 2022 with Subaru Boys: FINAL HEAVEN and has stuck with that alias ever since.
Across Ize-Iyamu’s name-hopping career, Mandy & The Jungle stands out as a seminal triumph of his style and vibe. The style is a tightly threaded tapestry of trap, dub, and Afrobeat, their borders blurred by hazy waves of major chords that suspend each track in a perpetually misty warmth. The vibe is the glimmering calm of a daytime rainstorm, listening to the drops’ soft patter on windows from the safety of covers you have no particular urgency to leave. Mandy & The Jungle bottles this feeling and deepens it with a seemingly bottomless cast of collaborators who add layers to the album without disrupting its central energy. But it’s Ize-Iyamu’s voice that carries the record, sometimes in seraphic falsetto, sometimes in a flow so bouncy it risks taking his features out to pasture. On “Maria,” though, Goldlink earns his flowers, delivering the line that limns the album’s hearth-like glow: “You make me feel like I’m home, so I guess that I’m home.”
Bonus Pick: Top off your glass of emo-tinted trap with this 2019 EP from China’s Bloodz Boi.