Matangi
M.I.A.
N.E.E.T. Recordings
November 2013
The arrival of a new M.I.A. album is always a thing to behold. Music critics are sure to be polarised, as are the usually ham-fisted attempts to better categorise her work to make it less controversial than it is.
Snide remarks about her latest, Matangi, however, have been relatively muted in the months since its release.
Maybe that's because we鈥檝e had at least an inkling of what the album has in store for some time now. 鈥淏ad Girls鈥, one of聽 Matangi鈥檚 lead singles, first saw the light of day on the聽 Vicki Leekx聽 mixtape two years ago.
And much like that mixtape, Matangi plays as one long track, displaying a certain bravado that feels very comfortable; M.I.A. knows how to own the space. It鈥檚 a reminder that at its best, her music can feel like an event, a movement almost. That鈥檚 a frustratingly rare phenomenon.
And in the she鈥檚 happy to remind us: 鈥淚f you鈥檙e gonna be me you need a manifesto/If you ain鈥檛 got one you better get one presto.鈥
This, of course, is trademark M.I.A. As are the lyrics to ; the track 鈥 about a minute and fifteen seconds long 鈥 essentially serves as something of a moral lynch-pin for the album:
Brown girl, brown girl
Turn your shit down
You know America don't wanna hear your sound
Boom boom jungle music
Go back to India
With your crazy shit, you're bombing up the area
Looking through your Instagram
Looking for a pentagram
All I see is poor people, they should be on ghetto-gram
You don't get our underground
Brofest or overground eat ham
Fist pump, even throw your dick around
Yeah you try to stick around
Do you do you bikram?
Let you into Super Bowl, you tried to steal Madonna's crown
What the fuck you on about?
Think about goin鈥 to France, quelle heure est-il
This ain't time for your terror dance
Eat, pray, love
Spend time in the Ashram
Or I'll drone you
Kony 2012
Now scram!
It鈥檚 all here: the weird provocative wordplay and stutter-step delivery, the invocations of globalisation鈥檚 refugees, the spiky rebukes to her establishment haters and their ingrained sense of Kipling-esque privilege.
Not to mention the opportunity she takes to flash that famous middle finger yet again at the to her 2012 Super Bowl halftime show.
This is one of the characteristics that used to be far more common in music but has been sidelined over the past few decades: the idea that聽 songs are , with all the specificity that comes with such sharp exchanges of ideas.
When Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden revealed to the world that the NSA has been spying on literally all of us literally all the time, M.I.A. was rightfully quick to savour an 鈥淚 told you so鈥 moment at the expense of those critics who called her a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Word is she even got Julian Assange to help out with one of the songs on Matangi.
The NSA revelations, the Arab revolts, Occupy, the huge protests from Turkey to Brazil; all have bolstered and sharpened the basic awareness that there鈥檚 an us and a them, and the two are inexorably opposed. If the return of a musical conversation is in the offing, then that conversation is unified by ideas of a very real and never-ending crisis.
These events haven鈥檛 proved the tipping point they first seemed, however. Far from it, they鈥檝e left much of the world asking 鈥渨hat鈥檚 next?鈥 So it is with an artist like M.I.A.
Radical musicians have long and famously employed non-Western sounds as means to 鈥渄ecolonising music鈥, and she鈥檚 done it in a singularly fascinating way. But what does this mean, when living standards in 鈥淔irst World鈥 countries like Greece and Spain are circling the drain and those closest to redefining their own destinies are found in 鈥渄eveloping鈥 nations?
What does it mean that even while the music business persists with the hackneyed, Orientalist concept of 鈥渨orld music鈥, an artist like M.I.A. can gain wide praise and acclaim?
M.I.A. hasn鈥檛 been asking herself these questions per se, but she has been asking existentially-tinged queries related to her own work. In interviews, she鈥檚 mentioned the amount of reflection she鈥檚 done over the past few years, asking where she and her music fit into this chaotic and often dismal existence.
This push to flip the doom on its head, to create some sense of a future for both herself and her audience, is evident throughout聽 Matangi. The name of the album itself comes not just from M.I.A.鈥檚 namesake 鈥 Mathangi Arulpragasam 鈥 but from the green-skinned Hindu goddess of music and arts.
It鈥檚 certainly evident in the opening track . , an open rejection of Canadian rapper Drake鈥檚 viral 鈥淵ou Only Live Once鈥 refrain, essentially revolves around the idea that such notions of the future are inescapably real.
M.I.A. responds: 鈥淵OLO? I don鈥檛 even know anymore/what that even mean though/If you only live once why we keep doing the same shit/Back home where I come from we keep being born again and again and again/That鈥檚 why they invented karma.鈥
It may be hard for Western listeners to hear this without New Age condescension springing to mind, but key in this passage is the notion that karma is聽 invented; humans make their circumstances and can unmake them too.
This kind of exploration makes for an album that may not be M.I.A.鈥檚 most successful, but is certainly her most self-aware and mature to date. The sampling of bhangra, reggae and Middle Eastern rhythms; again, all the markers are here.
Sonically it鈥檚 all been stripped down to within an inch of its life. It鈥檚 also used in a notably more restrained way than we鈥檝e previously seen. Previous records have shown M.I.A. to be a specialist in the art of pastiche, but there is more of a centre on Matangi.
There is a sense that even at those moments when an outlier soundwave is thrown in, it knows exactly where it鈥檚 landing. On top of this, she鈥檚 frequently happy to have a song be little more than a simple beat and her rhymes.
Several songs are just this, particularly the early tracks. In fact, if people only plan to listen to it in passing, or merely as a way to 鈥渇ill the space鈥, they鈥檒l discover this album won鈥檛 do.
All of this makes Matangi a challenging album to get hooked on; as a collection of songs it demands active engagement over passive consumption. By the time the gaps start to be filled in, if we鈥檝e willingly taken the role of active listener, we鈥檙e more involved, almost as if we鈥檝e been allowed to insert ourselves into the empty spaces that populate the first few tracks.
Ultimately, Matangi comes off not just as a negation but a valiant attempt to provide an answer in the affirmative. It is not just a rejection of the 鈥渨orld music鈥 bullshit (which has always been part of M.I.A.鈥檚 oeuvre), but an insistence that the myriad genres and styles have lives and paths of their own that bob and weave, intersect and diverge of their own accord.
Certainly M.I.A. is not the only artist who has made this insistence, but with the album鈥檚 bar raised by the participation it demands, we鈥檙e left with the sense that perhaps we actually have a role in reshaping these sounds and senses. It鈥檚 a potent mixture, and one that seems worth deepening.
[Reprinted from magazine.]
