Xavier Lassiter – Special to the Southern News
M.I.A. doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about your fandom. She doesn’t care about radio play. She doesn’t care about her relevance. In her world, the real world, there is social injustice, war, and poverty. Until it goes away, M.I.A. will continue to address it, instead of swooning you with a love song.
Her fourth studio effort, “Matangi,” is a hard hitting, beat-heavy bottle rocket. Why a firework instead of something a little more threatening like a bomb? The explosion is pretty, but it’s not actually changing the landscape.
The aggressive nature of the album is definitely attention grabbing. But there is a lack of impact because it is about three years late. M.I.A. could have released this wake-up call when she was getting her “Paper Planes” money and the kiddies were listening to “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars. Unfortunately, the bombastic “Maya” wasn’t greeted with much praise, and it wasn’t a commercial success either. Now she’s foreign to mainstream audiences again (no pun intended), and the only ones getting her message are eclectic listeners who already knew what was up.
There aren’t any major changes in her sound this go around. The opening track “Karmageddon” begins with a shimmering sitar that jangles as if you’ve walked through a beaded doorway. But just when it gets a little too dreamy, her signature mega bass thwomps the track as she delivers her signature spoken-raps.
Every track is a sample-heavy kaleidoscope of dance, hip-hop, and world beat. The 2012 hit “Bad Girls” is included in all of its thumping, female-empowering glory. “Y.A.L.A.” lampoons Internet culture’s epitaph, YOLO. The outro contains one of my favorite moments on the album, M.I.A. says:
“YOLO? I don’t even know anymore, what that even means though/If you only live once why we keep doing the same shit?/Back home where I come from we keep being born again and again and again, that’s why we invented karma.”
M.I.A.’s slick, spiritual rap-singing is in full effect on “Matangi.” On “Warriors” she raps about reincarnation, “This time I come as singer/ Next time I’ll come as pain/ I ain’t talking money/ But I can make it rain.” On the aptly titled “Bring the Noize” she has some playful tongue-twisters, “I can say lots with a little words or few/Like Adam had ‘em, yeh, me, the madame”. Though some of her punch lines can get a little cheap. On “Exodus” she sings, “My blood is no negative/ But I’m positive the dark ain’t deep/ just switch your lights on when we hit the street.” There’s a thin line between poetry and cheese.
Her socially aware rhymes are not unexpected, but their potency are a pleasant surprise. Since her mainstream success with 2007’s “Paper Planes” she could have easily became a novelty. Spitting pretty though meaningless raps over punk samples. But what separates M.I.A. from mediocrity is her creativity and her don’t-give-a-crap attitude. Every mainstream artist these days try to feign indifference to success. But M.I.A. actually wouldn’t care if you were her fan or not. She isn’t trying to stay relevant or reinvent herself for casual audiences, she’s chooses to make it spiritual, make it kooky, and make it for herself.
M.I.A. does her best to stay out of the pop spotlight, but she would be doing everyone a favor if she, dare I say it, sold out a little. If she traded in her semi anonymity to join the pop-Disney princess club of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Rihanna she could give the mainstream some culture, and give kids something to sing about other than swag. Sadly, it’s an unrealistic notion. Her continuous battle with Interscope over creative integrity is what delayed this album. And I don’t think she would alienate her current fan base to gain a wider audience. After all, loyalty is good karma.
4 out of 5 owls!
