On M.I.A.’s second studio album, Kala, the
globetrotting artist did exactly what everyone prayed for: She did not
disappoint. Given her meteoric ascension to underground
pop-deification, not letting fans down was a pretty astonishing
feat.
The story of M.I.A. (known to Homeland Security as Maya
Arulpragasam) has reached folklorish levels, and as a music journalist,
I am contractually obligated to rehash it. Raised in Sri Lanka, Maya’s
family moved from one underdeveloped corner to another (with a short
stint in India) as civil war tore the country apart. Maya’s father was
part of the country’s separatist militant organization, the Tamil
Tigers—something that would later fuel the politics of her music,
make for great magazine copy, and give M.I.A. the global-resistance
version of “street cred.”
Her mother moved the family (minus Dad) to London, where Maya
eventually became singer/rapper M.I.A. In 2004, she and Diplo released
1,000 copies of the mix tape Piracy Funds Terrorism, which
became the most buzzed-about album that almost nobody had ever heard.
By the time her solo debut, Arular, dropped in 2005, audiences
desperate to love her music (but couldn’t previously get their hands on
it) were rewarded with a fantastic album that drew on countless forms
of international dance music and bundled them with M.I.A.’s signature
blend of militant political jargon, goofy dancing in even goofier
outfits, and hand-sprayed tiger (as in Tamil) graphics.
Earlier this year, it was up to M.I.A. to prove that she wasn’t a
fluke, and she did just that with Kala, a global journey of
underground dance, weaving together samples from the Clash, guest spots
from Nigerian rappers, cues from Bollywood soundtracks,
seizure-inducing album art, and quasi-political phrases like, “I put
people on the map who’ve never seen a map.” (A lyric that seems to have
impressed everyone but this writer.)
But in the rush of excitement that accompanied M.I.A.’s success on
Kala‘s best tracks—theultra-intense “Bamboo Banga” or the
bouncing, languid “Paper Planes”—few people pointed out the
album’s generous stash of songs that never quite get off the ground.
“Bird Flu,” the album’s sonic mascot, with its pounding polyrhythms,
avian squawks, and lyrics about being “an outlaw from the underground,”
is hook-free and lacks a real chorus. “Boyz” suffers a similar problem,
despite its equally dense and urgent non-industrialized tone. Without
the pop infrastructure of her best material, Kala often feels
like M.I.A. spent more time creating an aesthetic kinship with global
underdogs than crafting great songs.
(The album’s sourest note comes on “Mango Pickle Down River,” a
dubious “collaboration” with Wilcannia Mob: Five years ago, under the
Wilcannia moniker, five pre-teen aboriginal boys recorded a deliriously
good rap/didgeridoo song called “Down River.” On Kala, M.I.A.
appropriates the entire song, wedges in a forgettable verse of her own,
renames the track, and packages it as her own. The defunct Wilcannia
Mob—who was hardly a “group” to begin with—signed off on
the usage and were presumably compensated fairly, but it reeked of
creative bankruptcy and borderline culture-jacking.)
But deification and criticisms aside, Maya Arulpragasam remains a
mere human and is certainly allowed a few bum notes over the course of
her unique and impressive career. Even for those tiring of the M.I.A.
persona/worship/shtick/overexposure, it’s impossible to deny the
complexity of her musical ambition, and her ability to weave countless
strands of global culture into the instantly recognizable brand that is
M.I.A.