M.I.A.'s debut record is both intensely urban and aggressively modern. The group's sole member, Maya Arul, infuses her blend of hip-hop and chunky electro with raw, tribal overtones and a healthy dose of sex appeal. There are elements of world music here, in Arul's multilingual vocal as well as the tonal shifts and instrumentation (like the drone that opens up "Hombre"). Her delivery uses a variety of yelps and tics full of street-wise confidence and bratty energy. But there's also an appealing melodic sense, like early Neneh Cherry or Miss Kitten when she's not in diva mode. M.I.A. doesn't really sound like anybody; the music is just experimental enough to wiggle out of easy comparisons. The IDM-style bleeps and beeps of "Galang," for example, give an already catchy song extra punch. The only problem with the record, a common flaw for debuts, is a sameness from track to track which robs it of the ability to surprise. Still, Arul is hugely talented and her abundant originality packs a wallop. --Matthew Cooke
Review by Andy Kellman
A cursory listen to Arular makes one wonder how it could generate so much heated, in-depth talk, as it did well before its official release. This is very direct and physical party music, with lots of slang-filled phrasings that might not have any more meaning than "The roof is on fire!" or "Dizzouble dizzutch!" to Americans. It's music that is conducive to dancing or doing other carefree things in the sunshine, rather than what you should hear most often through feeble computer speakers in dimly lit rooms. So why bother discussing it at all? Well, below the surface is a lot more than anyone's basic idea of a good time. The blend of styles -- a dense, often chaotic collage of garage from the U.K., dancehall from Jamaica, crunk from the Dirty South, electro and hardcore rap from New York, and glints of a few others -- is unique enough to baffle anyone who dares categorize it. Beats crack concrete in whomping blasts and scramble senses in exotic patterns; flurries of percussive noise, synthetic handclaps, and synth jabs add chaos; exuberant vocals are delivered in a manner that will be frequently unintelligible to a lot of ears. More importantly, once all the layers of rhythm and accents are peeled away, you'll hear that Maya Arulpragasam -- the London-based woman of Sri Lankan origin who, along with a host of fellow producers, is behind the album -- has a lot more on her mind and in her past than fun, even when she's only alluding to the violence and strife her people have endured. The images that adorn the cover of the album aren't present merely for the sake of design, either; the tanks aren't a nod to the No Limit label. (Enter 10,000-word history of pre-tsunami Sri Lanka here.) The one key definite about Arular is that it's the best kind of pop album imaginable. It can be enjoyed on a purely physical level, and it also carries the potential to adjust your world view.
M.I.A.
Arular
[XL/Beggars; 2005]
Rating: 8.6
Arular was first expected to be released in late 2004, but instead M.I.A. gave half of its vocals away to Diplo's Piracy Funds Backlash mixtape, which married her London Sri Lankan patois to music from New York, Rio, and Kingston. The mix highlighted her big-tent approach to global rhythms and Now Sounds, an M.O. that was cemented when she professed her love for hip-hop crew the Diplomats and rap's spiritual cousins, grime, baile funk, dancehall, and reggaeton in The New York Times. Faster than you can say "galang-alang-alang," M.I.A. became the one-woman embodiment of what to some is great about the contemporary pop music landscape. All that's left is for M.I.A. to draft Seba as producer and that voice that name-stamps dancehall tracks like a heavily drugged, vocoded Just Blaze as MC: "M.I.A. on... Bionic Ras... Baile Funk... Forward Riddim..."
This transglobal express isn't new, of course: Young Jamaicans have been combining the best of U.S. hip-hop and UK dance culture for years, American rap producers seem addicted to the sub-continent, grime is actually lobbing singles into the UK top 40, and Nigeria is threatening to become the new hip-hop hot spot. "From ghetto to ghetto, backyard to yard, taking it transglobal on the aboveground, because that's where the people are," Hyperdub's Sterling Clover said of this trend a few years ago. At the time he was talking about bhangra and the Indian influences on hip-hop, but he could just as easily have been talking about dancehall or grime or baile funk. And when it comes to M.I.A., you can practically talk about all of them at once.
Unlike most musical tailors, neither she nor her mixtape partner Diplo is afraid to let the seams show. Rather than hiding up the ass of cratedigging culture, they relish sharing the spotlight with and revealing their sources, with M.I.A. dropping names in NYC broadsheets and Diplo opening two-way routes between Philly and the favelas rather than stashing all the best dubplates for himself. Northern Soul is probably turning over in its grave.
If the two are interested in creating a dialogue between different artists and sounds, they're also more than happy to allow listeners to eavesdrop, whether they're improvising (Piracy) or well-rehearsed (Arular, Favela on Blast). M.I.A.'s freedom-through-homelessness is shared by other artists (most notably dj/Rupture) but not by many of the source sounds found on her records, most of which are fiercely regional. Where Rupture's name suggests a destruction of the borders between scenes, cultures, and nations, his methods-- which include healthy doses of splatter beats and breakcore-- can also seem violently deconstructionist. M.I.A's moniker, on the other hand, appropriately suggests rootlessness. She's not exploring subcultures so much as visiting them, grabbing souvenirs and laying them out on acetate: The favela trumpet on "Bucky Done Gone", the London slang of "Galang", the disco sample on "Sunshowers", the steel drums of "Bingo", the electro-fueled vocal edits of "Hombre".
M.I.A.'s detractors claim her flirtations with terrorism and revolutionary politics reveal the biggest case of sufferer's envy since Joe Strummer but little depth of thought. But if the latter is true, so what? An in-depth examination of demonizing The Other, the relationship between the West and developing nations, or the need to empathize with one's enemies would likely make for a pretty crappy pop song. An argument can and has been made that her political lip service is unique enough to get those topics onto your tongue or into your brain, prodding listeners to at least examine them. Some might find that off-putting, but pop music that reflects uncomfortable realities and is packaged in this sonic collage beats the hell out of 1980s left-wing hand wringing from Bragg or Bono or Biafra.
And when it comes down to it, that "sonic collage" is still what's important here. With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.
-Scott Plagenhoef, March 22, 2005
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