In 2010, it would be an understatement to say that M.I.A.'s third album was the most anticipated of the year. Her sophomore effort, Kala, was so overwhelmingly well-received that Maya Arulpragasam became the "it" girl of the music industry. It shoved standard pop aside and, for a brief moment, the grime/rap of "Paper Planes" and "Boyz" ruled the airwaves.
Kala shot M.I.A. into the stratosphere, selling over 500,000 copies in the US alone amidst the burgeoning streaming world, with Blender and Rolling Stone naming it their #1 album of 2007. Then to wait three more years for a follow-up, the time seemed interminable.
Then in early 2010, the single "Born Free" was released, giving the world a glimpse into the sonic hellscape that MAYA would live in. Loud, blown-out production, glitchy effects. It was accompanied by a music video so violent and disturbing it was almost banned from music video channels; depicting a systematic genocide against people with red hair, a fictional government force, in riot gear and highly weaponized, rounds up gingers on buses and transports them to the desert, where they are summarily executed.
To say it was controversial doesn't do the backlash justice. How could anyone think this was okay to show? What on Earth was she trying to say? It was a post-2008-Obama-election America, "stuff like that" just doesn't happen anymore.
Eight years later, an equally violent music video for Childish Gambino's "This Is America" would be lauded as "brave" and "speaking truth to power." And this is not to criticize that video; Donald Glover and Hiro Murai created a piece of pure art that told a powerful truth about the dark side of the US. Perhaps M.I.A. was just a bit ahead of her time. Given what's going on in America, China, and Belarus now, I would call her a soothsayer.
A second single, "XXXO," was released a month later, and it was more to the taste of those waiting for Kala Pt. 2: a pop beat, a stadium anthem chorus, mainstream use of synths and samples. It is a perfect example of M.I.A. using her musical prowess to create a true banger, but this was the last song most would find recognizable.
MAYA debuted in July of 2010, and it did so to a divided critical reception. Pitchfork gave it a 4.4/10, AllMusic, Entertainment Weekly and The Guardian all gave it below-average reviews, while Rolling Stone gave it a 4/5, and Spin gave it a 9/10. Most decried the lack of "direction" (or more specifically, hated the direction it went) and loathed the hyper-amped sound that pushed into the red. They hated the industrial samples, and despised its glitch aesthetics.
Those that saw it for what it was--a bold turn into the delightfully, frightfully weird side of electronic music, and an established artist finally free to flex her creative muscles--believed, like I did, that it gave us a "mainstream" entry-way into that most wonderful of musical accompaniments:
NOISE! GLORIOUS NOISE!
"The Message" starts the album as a sort of skit, a song format M.I.A. had avoided entirely on Kala after having several on her debut, Arular. But unlike the fun-sounding back story style we saw on that first album, "The Message" is much more apocalyptic. A KMFDM-style beat pounds away like a terrifying jackhammer, while a very serious man delivers lines about "the internet connects to the Google, connects to the government," a warning about internet privacy and surveillance that wouldn't be heeded for another half decade at least. Needless to say, this is exactly the introduction this album needs.
"Steppin Up" is clearly the most extreme of the new sound, beginning in the clear before ear-splitting samples of power drills and table saws peal across your headphones. The song breaks down into the standard M.I.A. rap before returning to a chorus filled with those industrial samples and a de-tuned metal guitar chugging away. This is clearly the filter song, we're only one into the album and M.I.A. is testing the limits of our listening ability. It's a brilliant gate-keeping strategy: if you can't handle "Steppin Up," we don't want you around for the rest of it.
"XXXO," as previously mentioned, is the pop pinnacle of MAYA, Tamil folk music samples lie gently over a The-Dream-inspired drum pattern and hints of Crystal Castles-esque glistening loops pop in around the chorus, which is a beautiful mash-up of themes about hidden identities and cultural appropriation. The song is so good it made it on NME's "Best Songs of the Past 15 Years" in 2015.
"Teqkilla," my personal favorite, is a loop-heavy, sample-laden spoof of the "party all night" songs that were pervasive in pop and hip-hop at the time (and, sadly, still), but absolutely smothered in Peaches-inspired electro-clash sounds that would put Aphex Twin to shame. Samples of clinking glasses, toilets flushing, a harsh synth ride, and syncopated hand claps make "Teqkilla" the most experimental M.I.A. has ever been. The chopping, distortion, and looping of her own vocals make the epic's six-minute runtime feel like a breeze, like a constant road of discovery of new sonic highways never before heard.
"Lovalot" seamlessly transitions into the British grime and dub styles that M.I.A. was clearly influenced by in her first forays into music. A deep bass thrums hypnotically as M.I.A. rhymes with a cockney accent some of her most overtly political lines to this point. The obscure and limited chorus is often interrupted by chopped samples of Opal.
A heavily distorted excerpt from a Bollywood film forms the basis for the hook of "Story to Be Told," which continues the grime/dub sound, but with a large helping of late-era Meat Beat Manifesto production. M.I.A.'s vocals are mixed very far in the front, almost like the cut out from a sonic pop-up book, while at the same time drenched in reverb.
"It Takes a Muscle" is, by a wide margin, the most wonderfully strange song on the album. A dancehall slow jam that must have been composed entirely on a Casio keyboard, it's upbeat message and calm musicianship gives the listener a respite between two very heavy halves of an otherwise dark album. In a moment of pure genius production, M.I.A.'s vocals are run through a filter that sounds like a cheap mic and the music is mixed toward the back, giving the whole song the effect of a dingy karaoke bar.
"It Iz What It Iz," (other than being our dear leader's fateful words about 180,000 dead Americans from a pandemic he could have lessened) is probably the strangest of the choices for inclusion on MAYA. A beat taken from an 80s Madonna song and a synth loop that calls back Oracular Spectacular MGMT build the ground work for innumerable vocal layers that cover each other over and over until they're nearly indistinguishable. Clearly a way to shy away from singing as opposed to rapping, what initially appears as a mess soon becomes a warm blanket of voices, their sounds no longer just words, but an instrument.
"Born Free," begins with a live drum, never before heard in an M.I.A. song, before being slammed with a fuzzed-out guitar, a cross between Death Grips (a band that wouldn't exist until a year later) and old-school punk (a credit to its sample of Suicide's "Ghost Rider"), until eventually we're met with M.I.A.'s INCREDIBLY LOUD, overblown voice. The voice tells us stories of being "free" while at the same time subject to the whims of an economy that doesn't care, and living in abject, impoverished squalor. The dramatic irony is delicious. The headbanging, doubly so.
"Meds and Feds" heavily relies on a sample from fellow loudness war enthusiasts, Sleigh Bells' "Treats," and is an exercise in turntablism and sample DJ-ing that passes muster against any contemporaries (Crystal Castles, Dan Deacon), and surpasses many others. This is the loudest song on the album and the Scanners effect the volume has is well worth the brain explosions. The crushing weight of EBM influence wouldn't show up again in music until Health released Slaves of Fear or Youth Code released...anything by Youth Code. This is industrial noise in all its 80s-Ministry, eardrum-shattering glory.
"Tell Me Why" is probably the weakest song in the bunch. It features M.I.A.'s signature satiric lyrics about making money as fast as possible, laid over a Panda Bear Person Pitch-sample loop with a drum-line beat. The chorus leaves a bit to be desired: not particularly subtle or inspired, you could make the argument that it too is supposed to be a sarcastic send-up of "feel-good" stadium anthems that teen pop was and still is so attached to. Either way, the effort still receives an 'A,' as the loop and 1920s folk-song sample are certainly avant-garde in this genre.
Closer, "Space," returns us to the dark electro of the rest of MAYA, while M.I.A. sings, prophetically, of being too ahead of her time. Earlier that year, she had been accused of being a conspiracy theorist, until only three years later, the NSA's warrant-less tapping of phones would be exposed by Edward Snowden. (NOTE: this is NOT an endorsement of Snowden. While he did reveal information that was helpful to the American people, he also stole untold amounts of information that almost certainly could put our service men and women at grave risk. The point of this was purely to state that M.I.A. was saying in 2009/2010 that the NSA was spying on Americans and then in 2013 that ended up being true.)
In 2010, M.I.A.'s third album was felt by many to be a disappointment, a slump, a misstep. Looking back, we can see just how wrong they were. Other elements seemed to scheme for this album's demise: the New York Times ran what was essentially a smear campaign in their "profile" of Maya Arulpragasam, insinuating that because she could now afford things like truffle fries, she should shut up and not talk about genocide, systemic racism, and wage slavery anymore; while the violence of the "Born Free" video coupled with her "conspiracist talk" led to death threats and dropped tour sponsors.
In the wake of the bad press MAYA recieved, M.I.A. would retreat from her experimentalism, and with Matangi would fully 180 back to mainstream hip-hop and pop with singles like "YALA," "Bad Girls" and "Double Bubble Trouble," as well as two Weeknd guest spots. We would never see or hear anything like MAYA from M.I.A. again.
MAYA is demented, aggressive, risky, towering, startling, confrontational, catchy, and yes, loud. It set the standard for many noise-pop and experimental rap albums that would only begin to gain acceptance years later. Without MAYA, there's no Money Store, no SOPHIE, and no SoundCloud rap. It implores listeners to run through the pain and reach the core meaning...
...fight the power
