THE CAREER OF M.I.A. (Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) has been a copious wet dream for magazine editors, critics, bloggers, tweeters, and assorted culture vultures. With her colorful, dramatic backstory, studio savvy, predilection for confrontational imagery in her album art and videos, “exotic” good looks, and provocative way with catchphrases, this Sri Lankan/British vocalist/world-beat maven pushes more buttons than a multitasking producer on a cocaine bender.
While all of that is fairly interesting, it’s been overshadowed by Lynn Hirschberg’s infamous M.I.A. profile in the New York Times. Turns out that M.I.A. possesses a degree of hypocrisy (if you vow to pull up the people, you can’t eat truffle-flavored fries, apparently) and her personal history may have been fudged for career-advancement purposes. Well, I never… But, what if we (mostly) ignored all of that hullabaloo and focused on M.I.A.’s music? Is that allowed?
Okay, then. M.I.A.—along with her burgeoning stable of knob-twiddlers—excels at harnessing sonic chaos and rhythmic ballistics into concise, mongrelized missiles of dance-music gunpowder. This refugee wiz’s work carries a mercurial energy that makes a lot of people want to do important things—and, hey, even to dance once in a while, too.
Like Björk, M.I.A. is a chronic cool-hunter who will seemingly always have her antennae attuned to what’s happening on club culture’s fringes and will always manage to incorporate subterranean tropes into her own compositions. If nothing else, M.I.A. doesn’t want to play it safe or plow the same path for very long.
With her newest album, Maya (/\/\/\Y/\, if you’re nasty), the media’s torrid love affair with M.I.A. has cooled considerably. While 2005’s Arular and 2007’s Kala received 88 and 87 Metacritic ratings, respectively, Maya earned a paltry 67. This is somewhat puzzling. While Maya lacks the consistent loftiness of Kala, it does contain some catalytic bolts of brilliance.
“The Message” kicks off Maya with a rhythm akin to LCD Soundsystem’s “Get Innocuous” and relates a sinister interconnectedness between humanity and technology (e.g., “Google’s connected to the government”). The Rusko-produced “Steppin’ Up” runs metal guitars through hellish effects over stark, brutal dubstep beats and bass augmented with a clapping, triple-time counter rhythm. M.I.A.’s autotuned voice stutters and struts in android-like boastfulness.
“XXXO” is Maya‘s most accessible cut, with M.I.A. crooning (ironically?) at her most seductively Madonna-esque in the chorus. It sounds like a concession to Interscope, whose corporate logo sits next to that of XL Recordings and the auteur’s own N.E.E.T. imprint on the cover. “Teqkilla,” is a sexily urgent shuffle shot through with a pitch-shifted dentist-drill shriek, over which M.I.A. proves she can make funny liquor-centric puns and reel off amusing double entendres. Oddly, she reveals her lighter side amid a stridently ominous backdrop.
“Lovalot” is a low-key highlight, with M.I.A. conjuring an atmospherically and rhythmically strange foundation, with a subliminal, spiritual hum accentuating the shakers, scattershot drum tattoos, and deep bass plunges. “I fight the ones that fight me” becomes both a mantra and a warning.
A three-song dull stretch ensues (the dubstep dirge “Story to Be Told,” the morose skank “It Takes a Muscle,” and career low “It Iz What It Iz”) before the album’s zenith, “Born Free,” zooms into life. Producer Switch employs a honkin’ sample of Suicide’s pure-evil throb, “Ghost Rider,” to instigate one of the most thrilling rushes of 2010. It’s a 21st century “Born to Be Wild,” an irrepressible bout of braggadocio: “I don’t wanna talk about money coz I got it/I don’t wanna talk about hoochies coz I been it.” The adrenaline continues to skyrocket with “Meds and Feds” whose stomping, platform-booted beats and distorted guitar riffing (sampled from Sleigh Bells’ Derek Miller), make it a nightmare mating of ’70s glam and ’90s gabber. Why? Why not? M.I.A. likes a risky gambit.
Maya downshifts at disc’s end with “Tell Me Why,” as Diplo supplies a woozy, martial lurch to M.I.A.’s winsome vocal turn and swirling Babel of background vocals, while “Space” waves goodbye with a wistful electro dub sputter.
Regardless of her current status as the fiancée of liquor empire scion Ben Bronfman (a potentially fruitful tactical move for her career and philanthropic efforts), or her rich diet, M.I.A. is a radical force in pop music. Within the context of the mainstream’s airbrushed and apolitical atmosphere, her tracks barge into earshot with rude gusts of strange textures, rugged, ragged beats, and incendiary sentiments.
You can likely find contradictions and hypocrisies between/in the lives and art of John Lennon, John Lydon, Miles Davis, Kanye West, and maybe even Chuck D. Ultimately, the minutiae of musicians’ personal lives fades, and what’s left is the work. On that score, M.I.A. proves herself to be a cunning manipulator of agit-prop signifiers and a potential source of subversion. She’s a flashy conduit for underground sounds to bubble up to the chartsville, a rare combination of coquette and rabble-rouser, a figure poised somewhere between badass ’70s funkstress Betty Davis and civil-rights activist Angela Davis.
M.I.A. is equally as airbrushed and apolitical as her pop peers. Her image was carefully crafted so that lazy writers could promote her “colorful dramatic backstory” and skip the boring parts about crafty networking / sleeping with Diplo. I give a girl credit for playing the game, but a Betty/Angela Davis hybrid she is not.
Dave,
The Betty Davis // Angela Davis comparison is stupendously ridiculous. Flashy conduit maybe, uber-smart trend amalgamating Pez-dispenser sure. But relevant counter-culture figure on the scale of a prominent civil rights activist or even Betty’s level of gritty/psychadelic/funk-bombery, MIA is certainly not. Reached a bit too far there bud.
Maybe you were just hoping to catch MIA’s media-combing eye, as she scans outwardly to the horizon to see if she is in fact “over,” as opposed to looking within for inspiration to move her forward, past this dreadful album. Obviously Mercury, et al. were snubbed for an actual interview. Though that is probably due more to an over-zealous publicist reigning a clearly not-so-saavy former media darling in, than the fact that The Mercury’s underground/ear-on-the-tracks/harbinger of what is cool-ery/street-cred often isnt worth the paper its printed on.
“if you vow to pull up the people, you can’t eat truffle-flavored fries, apparently.” <<--- This snarky, in parentheses, flailingy-weak attempt at subversiveness, perfectly encapsulates how far removed most Portlanders, and sadly the cultural mavens who cover the arts "for" this community, are from what it means to be conscious of progressive social movements, to be in true solidarity with disaffected and disempowered minority groups, or, in short, to actually care about the people suffering in the world. Something Angela could teach you something about, if you had more than a passing awareness of her or her work. Instead, we get another posturing of oneself with actual movements for justice, actual sparks of humanity that come from the heart of people committed to changing this world, in the vain hopes of gaining points for association. MIA and Mercury are perfect for each other, now that I think about it. Skimming the surfaces of the cultural landscape for snippets of truth in order to sample a break, or quote, or icon in order to gain some semblance of authenticity; while, consciously or not, just moving more product, acquiring more capital, further following the spinning currents of depravity down the drain of conformity. We are different/creative/unique by acting the same, just slightly, ever so slightly, askew than the mainstream! This is hipsterdom at its core: safe revolt + comfortable irony + informed indifference = “being cool,” without ever having to leave your sad, little bubble. True revolutionaries, those truly “cool,” dont have to be told that posturing yourself as a person of the people while eating truffled fried potatoes in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel bar as you are interviewed by a cultural editor from The Times might come across to some as less than “authentic.” Some might actually see through the PLO-name dropping when you clearly spend more time caring about the theme of your pending photo shoot than….I dont know, actually going to the West Bank; maybe even going through the Ramallah checkpoint into East Jerusalem, herded through cages like cattle, while guns are aimed at you from the towers looming above. Thankfully people like Maya have people like Dave to help them maintain their pedestal. Otherwise, how would this whole system predicated on a fabricated social and cultural hierarchy stay afloat? Governmental control? Corporate dominance? Pop icons? All only exist because we believe in their power over our lives, because we allow them to exist. Guess what? That emperor being paraded down the street? He has no clothes on. Maybe its time to stop pretending that we see what is not actually there and doing so just for the sake of our own amusement. Maybe its time to go back outside and live a little bit. It is a beautiful day, after all. Sincerely,
Johnny Thundercorn
Hirschberg reminds me of the funniest kind of yellow journalism.
If you have to fabricate stories to sleight someone, then you know you go nothing.
Why mess with the most important artist alive when you have the wit of a fry?
Wow, that was quite the essay Mr. Thundercorn. You are so smart.
Sounds like she’s been found out! Let’s see what’s best for MIA’s career, sleeping with Diplo? Check…Having a child with an heir to billions? Check…Picking up and moving to a classy California neighborhood? Check…Sounds like she can say whatever she wants to say in her music…it’s not indictative of her life (anymore). She’s fake & is only after the fame!!