When the truth is MIA

Eighteen months later, as corporate jade-ism took hold and underpaid contracts were archived I was still excited about the release of Kala, the follow up to Arular (which was number twelve on my albums of the year in 2005). Upon first listen things seemed good. The album was poppy and upbeat, with the same raw, tribal feel of Arular. However on repeated listens it did seem like some of that passion might have herniated through the funk, gradually wearing through those Hip-Hop beats in the months since 2005 to prolapse through in certain songs; songs like Boyz. I wanted that song to mean something. I wanted it to be about reigning testosterone being the cause of global wars or something subtle yet powerful; a track like Amazon was on Arular. Anything global would have done, really. Anything with more meaning than just paying tribute to dance-moves from Jamaica. Fair enough I guess, but tributes seem to be a recurring theme in Kala. Take, for example, the single Jimmy, which is less than a tribute to anything and more just a blatant rip-off of a Bollywood classic of the 80's!

Alright, so M.I.A. is hardly unique in having a long list of samples and "influences" for an album. Sometimes artists take liberties, pay for samples and even base careers on this skill. Like Daft Punk! No one begrudges them for shit like this:

But the difference between Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and many other mega House/Hip-Hop acts is that they don't act anywhere near as "original" and virtuous as M.I.A. does. I first cottoned on to how nuts she might while reading her interview with Pitchfork in August. She feigns to avoid it, but she does break into a small rant about her ex-bf Diplo and how he had nothing to do with her new album or her success. This was, y'know, despite her approaching him to produce her first album and then "fancying him" and dating him. But breakups can be harsh, and turn already crazy chicks into total nutjobs.

Probably my favourite line from that interview was when she said:

"On this album I self-produced most of the album with Switch..."

This sentence, grammar ignored, is pretty hilarious. I mean how do you self-produce something with someone else. This is a pretty obvious contradiction in terms even if your first language is Tamil. It's an especially damning contradiction when you assume M.I.A. probably knows the army of producers involved on every track of Kala, not to mention those "influences" and rented samples.

Further to this there's her all caps rant about the western world and Liberia posted on her MySpace blog last December. It's shit like this that makes you seriously question her stability:

I LOVE LIBERIA , AND I DO IM GONNA ADOPT IT. I WILL GO THERE WITHOUT QUESTION. IF SRI LANKA....IS MY MOTHER COUNTRY THEN LIBERIA WILL BE MY MOTHERS BROTHER. AND THERE WERE T SHIRTS ON EX REBELS THAT SAID I LOVE LIBERIA.THAT WAS COOL.

I HAD A GUCCI SWEATER ON , AND THEY ASKED ME IF IT WAS REAL , I SAID NO AND THE MEN WERE LIKE OHHH SORRY IT WOULDA BEEN NICE IF U HAD THE REAL AUTHENTIC THING, AND I TOLD EM I WASNT SAD AT ALL. I JUS RATHER HAVE MY MONEY GO TO SOME POOR DUDE MAKIN EM IN CHINA OR AFRICA THEN THE POWER HOUSES IN THE WEST,

Oh how noble. This seems to be the same attitude she's applied to the people working the sweatshops making her beats. Mango Pickle Down River was one of my favourite tracks off the new album. But I didn't know how to feel when I learnt the whole thing was a five year old piece created by Morganics with a group of young indigenous kids in a musical outreach program in outback NSW, 1000kms out of Sydney. While Liberia is war-torn this area is just poor and boring, so I didn't think M.I.A. had been down to visit. According to Morganics:

"Last year Diplo - M.I.A's producer [y'know, the guy who had "nothing" to do with the album] - contacted me when he was out in Australia and asked if she could use it on her album. Basically M.I.A sent me her vocal accapellas, I remixed the track, inserted her vocals and sent it back to her."

Well, better than that money going to some powerhouse in the west... like Interscope records – owned by Universal Records – part of the money eating RIAA. But that's another topic. More all caps rant:

"ITS 1ST WORLD....MEDIA VS 3 WORLD MESSAGE THING."

Bullshit. M.I.A. started as an artist. Like, literally, making paintings and the whole bag. Then she turned to music and I learned she's completely batshit, but it's not that surprising – most arty chicks are. However it does make it much more difficult to enjoy Kala knowing that someone with motivations and passions, not questionable but more ungrounded, is belting out rants and borrowed lyrics over a conglomerate of rich producers beats. Sure, it all sounds good but there are times as a listener one has to take the moral hardline and only dance to what they believe in.