MIA’s debut album, 2005's Arular, was the product of Maya Arulpragasm holed up alone in her London room. Perfecting a simple combination of beats, samples and her own sing-song rapping, Arulpragasm took the sound of London grim and mixed it with her own idiosyncratic musical influences and revolutionary Sri Lankan politics. The end result was a taut, carefully produced album, filled with as many lyrical barbs as hooks, which made listeners think as much as dance.
MIA's new album, Kala, was recorded, among other places, in India, Trinidad and Liberia. It is the sound of Arulpragasm emerging from her room and discovering an entire international community. The loose, loud and energetic album knocks listeners over with a barrage of hand-drum percussion and blaring sirens.
Some have condemned MIA's militant leftist politics as opportunism and lip service — Arular's first single "Galang" was used in a Volkswagon commercial, and the final track of Kala is produced by label-servant Timbaland — the uneasy, unresolved relationship between Arulpgrasm's pop music and her social politics have always been her most compelling characteristic, and the best songs on Kala bring that conflict to the forefront.
The developed world's indifference to the suffering of the undeveloped world crops up again and again. "Hussel" crashes in with an anti-consumerist chorus before Maya rattles off sales slogans like "buy one song, get one free."
On "20 Dollar," MIA starts the song off with a skittering, flanged beat before singing, "Do you know the cost of AK[47s] is up in Africa?/ Twenty dollars ain't shit to you/ But that's how much they are." The chorus, pinched from the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind," questions the reasoning behind our seemingly absent minds. "I put people on the map that never seen a map," she boldly declares. "I show them something they ain't never seen/ And hope they make it back." The mood of the song is so laid back and laconic you could miss it all if you weren't paying attention.
A handful of tracks are dead-ends. The freestyle session "Mango Pickle Down River," with its group of aboriginal schoolchildren, would have been great as a short interlude, but it's painful at 4 1/2 minutes. MIA's pop-culture obsession also catches up with her on "XR2," as her acronym name-checking goes on forever and ruins the song.
On "Jimmy," MIA lays down a deceptively straightforward love song, positioning herself as a girl chasing after a globetrotting war correspondent named Jimmy. "When you go Rwanda Congo," MIA coos, "take me on a genocide tour/ Take me on a truck to Darfur." Then a giant and glorious keyboard hook drops in for the chorus, conjuring up mental images of the brooms from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" joining hands with Bollywood backup dancers, and everyone frolicking in a circle.
Maybe no track explores connections so profoundly as "Paper Planes," where MIA lies back and sleepily sing-songs about a plane trip. Parts of the track, like "Catch me at the border/ I got visas in my name," were undeniably influenced by her visa problems in the United States. Meanwhile, mix master Diplo's sample of The Clash's "Straight to Hell" vibrates like a warm, soothing jet engine underneath MIA's vocals. The Clash song denounces Vietnam War veterans who abandoned their illegitimate children after they returned to the United States following their tours of duty. "Paper Planes" seems to follow the same route, denouncing our complacency with other nation's troubles.
Yet, it's disturbing how easily three gunshots and the ka-ching of a cash register (somewhere someone is killed, and someone gets rich) mix so easily into the chorus. From somewhere, it seems, MIA innocently murmurs "Some some some some I murder/ Some some some I let go," before letting the chorus run itself out.
Despite some dull tracks and a few unsettlingly on edge, MIA's Kala proves that dance music daring to engage the body and mind demands to be heard.
