When I took it upon myself to review M.I.A.’s Matangi—her fourth album and first since 2010—I did not realize the difficulty of the task. Every time I listen to M.I.A.’s music, my head begins to bob, my feet begin to tap and, within one minute of any song’s beginning, I find myself dancing uncontrollably. Her music causes my body to lose all control its movements, and I resemble a dancing Thom Yorke who has just jabbed an EpiPen into his neck. Translating these feelings into words is a near-impossible task, and Matangi, like nearly all of M.I.A.’s music, contributes just as much to these feelings and uncontrollable seizure-dances. Trying to describe the adrenaline and dance-inducing ecstasy of Matangi is like trying to explain to a blind person what colors are like.
The album is a logical progression from M.I.A.’s last full-length release, /\/\ /\ Y /\, an album that divided critics because of its grating, industrial aesthetic and naïve, anti-establishment lyrical content. Stereogum recently pointed out that the album beat Death Grips and Kanye West to the now slightly-more-accessible “severe jackhammer sputter-pop sound.” The outspoken, anti-establishment nature remains intact on Matangi. But while /\/\ /\ Y /\ is M.I.A. at her most inaccessible, Matangi is arguably M.I.A.’s most accessible album yet.
Matangi finds itself perfectly at home in the contemporary electronic/dance music landscape. The Roland sequencer and drum machine sounds found on Arular and Kala still make up a backbone of the artist’s aesthetic, but she swaps out /\/\ /\ Y /\’s in-your-face abrasiveness for hard-hitting trap and moombahton beats. The beats—courtesy of Hit-Boy, Switch, The Partysquad, M.I.A. and others—could fit perfectly in the set list of a Diplo or Flosstradamus concert. This sonic palette, which combines arguably the most contemporary of music genres, fuses with M.I.A.’s references to YOLO and the Internet to create a dizzying look at today’s technology-fueled culture.
Like /\/\ /\ Y /\, Matangi begins with a short song, “Karmageddon,” that establishes her ambivalence towards modern technology, with lines like “cells grow to cell phones” and “systems shouldn’t operate by putting me in a cage” sung in nonchalant swagger over dystopian synths. M.I.A.’s call to arms is evident on nearly every song on the album, whether she’s rallying people to fight, party, fight for their right to party or party for their right to fight.
“Only 1 U,” one of the album’s many standouts, mixes chopped-up, pitched-up vocals, huge bass hits and M.I.A.’s clipped, confident voice to create arguably the most danceable beat of the year. “There’s trillions of cash / And there’s billions of us…There’s only one you and I’ma drink to that,” she sings atop it all. This round’s on me, Maya.
“MATANGI,” “Warriors” and “Double Bubble Trouble” are all hugely indebted to trap and unbearably intoxicating. With rallying cries of “Do you want more / Do you want more / It’s so simple / Get to the floor” and “Warriors in a dance / Gangsters, bangers, we’re puttin’ ’em in a trance,” the songs are simultaneously intimidating and exhilarating. M.I.A. is like the friend who you party with who suddenly finds it necessary to break stuff, but you don’t question it because you’re having such a good time. These party vibes culminate on “Double Bubble Trouble,” an infectious fusion of reggae and trap. It doesn’t add any innovation to either genre, but their combination makes for a song that hands-down wins the title of Most Fun Song of the Year. Listen to this on the biggest speakers you can, subwoofer cranked to 11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCkIYkaLBGs
On the whole, Matangi is one dance-inducing block of bangers, punctuated rather annoyingly by a couple obnoxious duds. It’s these songs that keep the album from being one of the standout albums of 2013. “Lights” is perhaps the worst song M.I.A. has ever created. She sounds like a teenager who’s accidentally huffed some ether and is struggling to stay conscious as she trudges through some truly awful lyrics: “These lights yeah, these lights yeah / Green colors looking nice, yeah.” The central conceit of “atTENTion” is similarly obnoxious, with the word “tent” repeated ad nauseam: “My exisTENTS is miliTENT ’cause my conTENT bangs like it’s poTENT.” M.I.A. is better than this, and this fact is affirmed on nearly every other song on the album.
Matangi is M.I.A. coming back with power, power. It’s her affirming that bad girls do it well. It’s her warning you that alarms go off when she enters the building. It’s her telling the soundman to bring the noise when we run up on them. It’s M.I.A. being M.I.A.: controversial, challenging and, above all, fun. M.I.A. gets a lot of beef from critics who can’t seem to dissect her contradictory personality and “slapped-together” music (read Noisey’s brilliant take on this). This album isn’t gonna change the haters’ minds, but Maya has the perfect response to these buzzkills: “I’m a party fuckin’ animal / If you ain’t, scram!”
4 out of 5 stars
Editor’s note: M.I.A., if you’re reading this, will you marry me? –Erik
