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Santigold joyously celebrates, and spoofs, her stardom in sold-out show at TLA

No artist can stay a child of her hometown forever. Philadelphia-born Santigold - who started life here as Santi White, singer of local ska-pop band Stiffed, and duet partner to rapper GZA and nu-soul songstress Res - became an internationalist, a singer-composer touching on a melange of funk, dub, reggae, ragga, punk, Africana, New Wave, hip-hop, house, electronica, and noise, often in one go.

No artist can stay a child of her hometown forever. Philadelphia-born Santigold - who started life here as Santi White, singer of local ska-pop band Stiffed, and duet partner to rapper GZA and nu-soul songstress Res - became an internationalist, a singer-composer touching on a melange of funk, dub, reggae, ragga, punk, Africana, New Wave, hip-hop, house, electronica, and noise, often in one go.

With three eclectic albums to her name (each four years apart) and nearing 40, Santigold, now based in Brooklyn, recently released the disc 99 Cents, which shows a performer with a sense of humor and a command of her role as a pop commodity by both lampooning the current femme-bot marketplace and playing into it with a snarky yet accessible slickness to the proceedings. She brought that gaudy, goofy mixed-bag sensibility, complete with costumed dancers and silly projections, to a sold-out audience at Theatre of Living Arts on Sunday.

Singing in a high, melodic, chattering voice with sunglasses-wearing dancers providing background vocal swoops, Santigold toyed often with gloriously odd variations on the classic girl-group sound. "Banshee" used the traditional Phil Spector-Ronettes schematic with a tribal synth-pop twist. "Who Be Lovin' Me" added sleigh bells to the mix. The robotic "Lights Out" forced listeners to reimagine Devo as a gaggle of singing, swinging women. After squeaking and yodeling her way through the piano-plinked "Chasing Shadows," Santi strapped on a bass and raced through the buzzing pop-hop "Who I Thought You Were" with a delicious punky bridge that recalled tough girl-group sounds from the Shangri-Las to Kleenex.

Though Santi used stage collaborators to their frugging, posing, singing best through moving vignettes and projections geared to satirizing all levels of commodification and explosive self-worth (Santigold Pez-Heads looked fantastic), the show's dazzle never strayed from its centerpiece. Acting the part of a wizard and true star, Santigold screwed with dub's dramatic echo by caressing the form with Birundi house vibes ("Big Mouth") and bird-chirping verses ("Big Boss Big Time Business"). The dance-hall swing of "Freak Like Me" allowed her alto squeal room to swivel.

As a mistress of synthy New Wave with a hip-hop beat, she easily out Stefani-ed Gwen by offering the souped-up, one-two, back-to-back punch of "Say Aha" and "Unstoppable," then the contagious likes of "L.E.S. Artistes" and "All I Got" with plucky guitars replacing pitchy synthesizers.

Offering a staged work with a running theme - how all artists package themselves for glossy celebrity consumption - Santigold succeeded wildly. And happily. (I don't think I've witnessed a cheerier show since The Sound of Music rolled through Philly over the winter.) As a form of performance art with big beats and padded shoulders, the small troupe never let their props or screen elements slow their roll, instead treating each theatrical and filmic element like another band member. Brava.