FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
IN THIS PHOTO: M.I.A./PHOTO CREDIT: Samuel Engelking
Part Fourteen: M.I.A.
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THIS is a bit of a strange feature…
because I am promoting and raving about an artist who has retired – or may not be writing and releasing music anymore. I shall come to that later but, in the meantime, I want to throw some love the way of the incredible M.I.A. I think she is iconic and inspiring because of her incredible sounds and the fact that she speaks her mind. M.I.A. (Mathangi Arulpragasam) has attracted controversy in the past; taking shots at MTV, Beyoncé and taking issue with celebrities backing Black Lives Matter – and whether they would support Muslim lives and rights. Like all great innovators and leaders, M.I.A. has faced her share of critical criticism and judgement. She has made the news for the wrong reasons and incurred some backlash. Whilst M.I.A.’s last couple of albums were not as regarded as her earliest work, one only needs to listen to her body of work to realise, here is one of the most intriguing and pioneering artists we have seen for decades. In her activism and mix of cultures; her style and bold music, M.I.A. is someone who has influenced other artists and made her mark on the music scene. Born in 1975, the stage name is, obviously, a reference to the military term ‘missing in action’ – maybe ironic considering we may not hear from M.I.A. again! M.I.A. started her career in 2000 as a visual artist, filmmaker and designer in West London. Not only is M.I.A.’s music evocative and cross-pollinating; look at some of her most eye-opening and memorable videos and you can see that that this background played directly into her music. Starting her music career, M.I.A. was actually one of the first artists to gain attention through the Internet and MySpace.
We take the Internet for granted, but M.I.A. was one of the early pioneers who understood the role the Internet would play and how important various platforms were. By 2004, she was turning heads with incredible singles like Sunshowers and Galang. In 2005, her much-anticipated debut album Arular, arrived. It is not surprise that her debut received such acclaim. Since that album, M.I.A. has embarked on global tours, and she founded a multimedia label, N.E.E.T. In March 2005, Arular was launched into the world (in the U.S.; it was released a month later in the U.K.). Because M.I.A. put a mixtape and singles out the year before, people sort of knew what to expect with the debut. That said, Arular still sounds remarkable today. I remember the album coming out and did not know of too many artists mixing cultures and sounds together like this. This year has seen artists like Sampa the Great take music away from the mainstream and West to new places. Maybe a lot of the most inventive and international music we hear today cannot be directly linked to M.I.A., but I definitely feel she (M.I.A.) opened doors and infused many other artists. Although M.I.A.’s music is eclectic, colourful and engaging, the production is quite sparse. She created the backing tracks for her debut on a Roland MC-505 sequencer/drum machine. Everything about the album seems like a step away from the predictable and ordinary. The songs are instantly original and the album’s title is the political code name used by her father, Arul Pragasam, during his involvement with Sri Lankan Tamil military groups.
Through Arula, M.I.A. fuses Hip-Hop, Punk-Rock and a multitude of genres to extraordinary effect. It is clear the album is very personal to M.I.A. It was said that her mother said of her father that all he gave us was his name. There were rumours M.I.A.’s father was a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and, estranged from the family, there is this sense that Arular is its creator trying to make sense of her upbringing and her father; maybe he would hear this album and think of his daughter. I will bring in an interview later where M.I.A. discusses her father, but I do like the fact that this enigmatic and exceptional artist released this debut album with such weight and personal meaning; far more arresting than a lot of what was being put out by other artists at the time. As I said, critical acclaim faded slightly after a few albums; Arular was a remarkable debut and was taken to heart by so many critics. This is what AllMusic had to say in their review:
“The blend of styles -- a dense, often chaotic collage of garage from the U.K., dancehall from Jamaica, crunk from the Dirty South, electro and hardcore rap from New York, and glints of a few others -- is unique enough to baffle anyone who dares categorize it. Beats crack concrete in whomping blasts and scramble senses in exotic patterns; flurries of percussive noise, synthetic handclaps, and synth jabs add chaos; exuberant vocals are delivered in a manner that will be frequently unintelligible to a lot of ears.
More importantly, once all the layers of rhythm and accents are peeled away, you'll hear that Maya Arulpragasam -- the London-based woman of Sri Lankan origin who, along with a host of fellow producers, is behind the album -- has a lot more on her mind and in her past than fun, even when she's only alluding to the violence and strife her people have endured. The images that adorn the cover of the album aren't present merely for the sake of design, either; the tanks aren't a nod to the No Limit label. (Enter 10,000-word history of pre-tsunami Sri Lanka here.) The one key definite about Arular is that it's the best kind of pop album imaginable. It can be enjoyed on a purely physical level, and it also carries the potential to adjust your world view.
Naturally, there was a lot of curiosity and interest aimed the way of M.I.A. after such a well-received and accomplished debut. It was only a year until her second album, Kala, arrived. I guess there was desire from XL and Interscope (record labels) to capatalise on her momentum and put another album out into the world. It is obvious M.I.A. herself was brimming with ideas and motivation. Kala is named after M.I.A.’s mother; a contrast to her debut and the way it references her dad. Family and roots were hugely important to M.I.A. If the debut was a heavier and more masculine album, its follow-up is a little lighter. Maybe that is the wrong word, but Kala is about M.I.A.’s mother finding work and her struggle; trying to raise her children and put food on the table. Sound-wise, there is a beautiful blend of World and Dance sounds.
Kala is both accessible and far-out; it is personal, yet anyone can listen to and relate. I think M.I.A. is a hugely influential artist, as she was fusing sounds that didn’t go together before. Now, there are artists who combine Asian and African sounds; they put unusual beats alongside electronics and more conventional tones. There are unconventional sounds, samples and a playfulness that, on paper, shouldn’t work. It is testament to the vision and talent of M.I.A. that her sophomore album is so remarkable, cohesive and free of filler. Like any M.I.A. album, sometimes her ambition and freewheelin’ approach does not yield solid gold. However, like its predecessor, Kala found willing patrons from the media. This is The Guardian’s assessment:
“And you certainly couldn't accuse MIA of undue reverence towards her musical source material. On Bird Flu, the Indian drums get battered amid a backdrop of squawking chickens and shouting children. The Bollywood samples are distorted and twisted almost beyond recognition. Similar treatment is meted out to a Nigerian rapper called Afrikan Boy: before his guest appearance on Hussel gets underway, his voice has been looped, cut up into stuttering patterns, drowned out by a honking synthesizer. Then he starts rapping in a thick west African accent, brilliantly inverting hip-hop's macho posturing. He mimics the swagger of a gangsta rapper, but there's nothing to swagger about in the illegal immigrant world he depicts: "You can't touch me," he snaps, "like leprosy."
Occasionally, she pushes her luck as well as the envelope. In 48 minutes, you get just two songs you might describe as having a tune: Jimmy, and the dreamy, Clash-sampling Paper Planes. You start out thinking it's a brave and bracing decision, but by the time you reach World Town - which, instead of a melody, has a synthesized noise that sounds like a mosquito repeatedly dive-bombing your ear - you begin to question its wisdom. But, even at its weakest moments, Kala sounds unique - and, thrillingly, like an album that could only have been made in 2007, which is not something you can say about many albums made in 2007”.
I will bring in some interviews a little later on, to provide a sense of how M.I.A. was perceived by the media and what she had to say. I wanted to bring in her first few albums to the fore first. Maya arrived in 2010 and was the first to be released to her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings and Interscope. Not changing things up too much, songwriting and production was split between M.I.A., Blaqstarr and Rusko; Diplo, Switch and Sugu Arulpragasm (her brother) also worked on the album. At this time, M.I.A. was living in Los Angeles, and a lot of Maya was recorded there. It is worth reading the entire interview, but I want to quote from a piece from The Guardian, where Miranda Sawyer met M.I.A. I was particularly struck by mentions of her father and her relationship with him:
“Mostly, she gets into trouble for speaking out about Sri Lanka. Born in London in 1975, she moved to her parents' native Sri Lanka when she was six months old, spending her first 10 years in a village outside Jaffna, in the north, and in Chennai in India. Her father was a founder of Eros, a student body which campaigned during the 70s and 80s for a separate Tamil state; his actions meant that Maya and her family were forced to return to London in 1987, where they lived in bedsits, hostels and council flats.
Maya doesn't take her politics from her dad, but she does speak out in support of Tamil citizens. Her assertions that the Sri Lankan government is guilty of the genocide of local Tamils have not been going down well. She's even been accused of supporting the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers, the separatist group that was defeated by the Sri Lankan government last year, ending almost 30 years of civil war. Kylie she ain't.
For an absent father, Arul caused a lot of grief, I say.
"Even now, really," says Maya. "Because everyone thinks my story is to do with my dad, when, you know, it's my uncle in Morden [south London] on my mother's side who's my inspiration." And she launches into his tale: he smuggled himself into the UK, sold clothes out of a car, ended up in the 1960s as "the first ever brown guy to have his own stall on Petticoat Lane". Everywhere you look in Maya's vast family, there's a story of adversity overcome, an epic adventure.
After she returned to the UK, aged 10, Maya heard nothing from her dad, until she summoned him back into her life by calling her first album Arular. "I thought that if he Googled himself, he'd get my LP and then he'd get in touch." The tactic worked, but their relationship is still fraught. Maya learnt most of what she knows about her dad from other people. "It irritates me that I end up giving him so much attention when he had so little to do with my life," she says”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Woffinden/The Observer
If one talks about the glory days of M.I.A., maybe the last huge release was Maya. I love all of M.I.A.’s album, yet one can definitely trace back to a time when she was unstoppable and had few peers. Again, Maya attracted a lot of positive reviews. Although some critics were not full of love, there were many who had praise for a remarkable album. Here is SPIN’s take:
“On the Suicide-sampling fuzzbomb “Born Free” (which was reduced to witless agitprop by Romain Gavras’ hamhanded video — watch below) she asserts: “I don’t wanna talk about money / ‘Cause I got it / I don’t wanna talk about hoochies / ‘Cause I been it.” And she’s even more blunt amid the synth cross fire of “Steppin’ Up”: “You know who I am / I run this fuckin’ club.”
And as a first-world pop-star mama, what’s obsessing M.I.A. day to day? Well, the Internet, of course, and Google and social networking and smart phones, and their subversive/oppressive potential (see her YouTube-crazed cover art). M.I.A.’s most plainspoken tracks, the data-dazed R&B of “XXXO” and “Space Odyssey,” speak dreamily of love and technology and how those wires so often get crossed. In the former, a pushy lover is kept at bay (“You Tweetin’ me like Tweety Bird”); in the latter, even a Puzzle Bobble game induces paranoia. “My lines are down, you can’t call me,” she coos. Despite M.I.A.’s fervor to engage the world’s battles, even she can feel overly connected.
After all, how do you think that terrorist couple first met? Yep, on the Internet”.
One of the most interesting things about M.I.A.’s albums are the lyrical themes and how we see these changes between albums. On 2013’s Matangi, she looked at Hinduism and reincarnation. Released in November 2013, in a lot of ways it was business as usual for M.I.A. The songs were as heady and explosive, but there was a change towards the more spiritual and religious – the album’s title references the Hindu goddess, Matangi. The blend of East and West makes for an exhilarating, diverse and potent listen. I did mention that, by her fourth album, there was a little bit of a split regarding critical acclaim. Despite that, there was a lot of love for an artist who remained original, forward-thinking and extraordinary. Here is SPIN’s review of Matangi:
“What sets Matangi apart from // / Y / is that this record’s highlights are also career highlights. M.I.A. is a far savvier songwriter than she ever gets credit for being, with a flair for naïvely memorable pop melodies, although she often undercuts them with noise or some other musical disruption, the equivalent of drawing an ugly mustache on a lovely portrait. That fusion of accessibility and disruption works best here on “Come Walk With Me,” the goofy verses on “Lights,” and “Exodus,” her gorgeous, cinematic collaboration with the Weeknd. Her facility with hooks extends to vocal manipulation: The apparently Julian Assange co-write “atTENTion” has some monstrously catchy octave drops, while “Only 1 U,” which might be the album’s best song apart from the Danja-helmed “Bad Girls,” brilliantly makes hooks out of a digital stutter (“Only 1 U U-U-U,” “Muthafucka now I’m steppin’ in-IN-IN-IN!”).
Matangi is also speckled with moments of dazzling production, mostly on the Switch-helmed songs: the crazed sound collage that occurs three-and-a-half minutes into “Noize,” the mosaic of vocal elements in “Attention,” the multidimensional sonics of “Exodus.” The result is a rollercoaster of sounds that rarely goes where you expect it to.
M.I.A. never makes things easy. Like its creator, Matangi is flawed, frustrating, and occasionally confusing, but it’s also intermittently brilliant and completely unique.
I have sort of whizzed through M.I.A.’s discography and her career from the start to here. Her last album - whether it will be her final album – was 2016’s AIM. There are a few collaborators on AIM but, like her previous albums, there is a clash of the East and West; a balance of the personal and hard-hitting. Whilst some of the critics were unsure of M.I.A.’s album, I love the fact that she was as innovative as ever. There are clashing swords – recorded in India – on Swords; lyrically, she talks about borders and refugees. I also mentioned earlier how M.I.A. has inspired artists today. The fact that M.I.A. was keen to document displaced people and melt different sounds in such a bold way has definitely rubbed off on some artists of today. Maybe AIM is not as mesmeric as the first few M.I.A. records; one cannot fault an artist who puts out such an eclectic and important album.
I remember when it came out, being struck by the gravitas and sheer brilliance of many songs. There were some slightly mixed reviews but, again, there were reviewers who could identify a unique artist in flight. Here is NME’s take:
“M.I.A.’s fifth album arrives with the usual mix of bumps, bruises and bravura. In June she was dropped from the line-up of London’s Afropunk Fest after making controversial comments about the Black Lives Matter movement; then last month she claimed her label was refusing to “clear” ‘Bird Song’, her first collaboration since 2010 with her former producer and ex-boyfriend Diplo. The track now appears on ‘AIM’’s Deluxe Edition.
Meanwhile M.I.A., AKA Mathangi Arulpragasam, has said that although she’ll probably continue to “put music out”, she thinks ‘AIM’ could be her last album. So it’s slightly surprising to find that it contains some of her most relaxed and reflective work. ’Survivor’ is a stylish synthpop glide; ‘Freedun’ features a beautifully woozy chorus sung by Zayn Malik (in a way, the M.I.A. of One Direction); and ‘Finally’ has her rapping about ignoring the haters over something close to a tropical house beat”.
Since she came onto the scene, M.I.A. built this reputation as someone who writes provocatively about politics. That is why I think it is sad she is not recording anymore…or there are no immediate plans! M.I.A. is somebody who can put out these songs that open your eyes, but she also has a lot of heart and passion. From her raw honesty, drum machines and openness, there is something very real about M.I.A. She is not someone defined by ego or hiding behind other people.
I think M.I.A. relates and connects to so many artists because she is very human; although her talent is clearly immense. Maybe the fact she is quirky and unique means that many took a while to warm to her. I feel a lot of people who criticised some of her later albums were not quite prepared for something as wild and otherworldly as M.I.A. Although M.I.A.’s political commentary and conversation has seen her on the wrong side of the media in the past, it can be traced back to M.I.A.’s early life where she was uprooted and displaced. She could relate to those involved in civil wars and battles; those who had to leave their homes. M.I.A. used platforms such as Twitter and MySpace to raise awareness of civil rights and warfare. I am going to wrap things up in a little bit but, as M.I.A. sort of departed from music back in 2016, I want to bring in a couple of interviews. She spoke with The Guardian - and there is a lot of fascinating information in the article.
“Arulpragasam was in her late 20s, and impatient. Against the advice of her then-manager (they split) she moved to the US. “Kids in America were downloading my MP3s. It was the country where George Bush was, where shit was happening. I wanted to go.” Her relationship with Pentz ended and Arulpragasam later suggested this was due to her growing embrace by the mainstream. She signed to Interscope, a subsidiary of Universal, and had meetings with Kanye West and Timbaland. After the release of her second album, Kala, in 2007, and its high-charting single “Paper Planes” in 2008, the rope properly lifted and MIA became an industry darling. She gigged at the Grammys with Jay-Z, was nominated for an Oscar, and even “married into the music industry” – Arulpragasam’s words to me – when she got together with Ben Bronfman, grandson of the CEO of Warner Music. The couple had a son together, Ikhyd, in 2009.
Remembering this period of prominence, Arulpragasam says to me: “When I came [into the spotlight], I came with all my complications.” The complications started to tell around 2010, when she rowed in blockbuster fashion with the New York Times over an unflattering profile, and ended up publishing the writer’s personal phone number online. In another 2010 interview she stated her belief that Google was a stooge company for the CIA, and via her intermittently written blog she got so deep into a war of words with a Sri Lankan rapper called DeLon that it led to accusations of her being a terrorist sympathiser. Her third album, 2010’s Maya, sold a fraction of her big-hit second. After the Super Bowl fiasco in 2012, a messy compensation claim followed her around for months. She came to believe her fourth album, 2013’s Matangi, her lowest-seller to date, had been “buried” by her own record label, because of all the trouble she’d caused them.
“Stars come and go / just like every empire,” she raps on her new album. Complicated as she was – as she is – Arulpragasam was never likely to have an endless career as a mainstream star. She seems relaxed about this, clearly more comfortable as a fringe-dweller, as someone who has talked, talked, talked and finally pissed them off.
It is clear that she needed time away from music. Maybe it was the attention she was getting regarding her political opinions. A lot of people felt the quality of her work declined, although it was merely evolving. I can appreciate the fact M.I.A. wanted to step back and take time to reflect. Earlier this year, she was awarded an MBE, and there are a lot of people wondering when she will return.
PHOTO CREDIT: Samuel Engelking
Definitely, one can see her spirit carried on in other artists. In this feature, I normally spotlight a female artist who is making music now and will be an icon of the future. I think M.I.A. is a hugely influential artist and cannot be overlooked. In a sort of ‘farewell’, she gave an interview with NME and it is clear she had reached a bit of a moment of breaking point:
“Even the most limber contortionist can only bend so far, though, and the industry seems to be trying Maya’s patience. “I just need time away from it,” she says, cool evening air drifting in from the balcony of the Soho hotel room in which she’s fielded questions from HBO and others all day. “I don’t want to change how I think creatively, to brand myself into an acceptable brand.”
Acceptable, it’s true, is definitely not on-M.I.A.-message. From day one of her career, she drew fire as well as delirious hype: critics questioned her back story, her grasp of the Sri Lankan politics they’d just hastily Googled, her authenticity. Add to this her ongoing US visa difficulties, the lawsuits, the furores… just trying to be M.I.A. over the last decade must have been pretty knackering. “It’s like I went through the washing machine on every level you can possibly think as a human,” she confirms. “If you say to me, ‘You went through all this sh*t, but you need to shut up because you had such an amazing run at the music game,’ it’s like, ‘No, I didn’t.’ Every step of the way they were like, ‘Shut the f**k up about your politics,’ and now it’s super-trendy. I never thought it was gonna be cool, otherwise I would’ve stockpiled my records and started releasing them now”.
I was eager to feature M.I.A., as she is a brilliant artist who does not quite get the credit she deserves. Her music is incredible, and it has definitely made an impression on me and so many other people. I just hope that that this wonderful and original artist is not…
DONE quite yet.