Mesmerizing singer's style is perfectly perplexing

It's difficult to fathom who she is or where's she's going musically. But her sound is mesmerizing.

By Sean Daly, Times pop music critic
Published August 25, 2007

M.I.A. was raised in London, reared in art school, she looks like a model, hollers like daddy's little girl. She's hard to pin down politically, but it's safe to say she prefers to stir the pot.
	[AP, Getty Images]

Like a giddy tyke with tinker toys, Sri Lankan hip-hopper M.I.A. builds her songs via colorful, clashing parts: Baltimore grit, Bollywood glitz, Martian laser fire, clips of the Clash. The hottest buzz act of the fall music season, and definitely the most mysterious, she indulges in ragtag creations that achieve catchy, childlike beauty only when that final piece is in place.

And that final piece is usually a doozy. The daughter of a Tamil Tiger rebel, M.I.A. shouts out political chants, rebel yells with the sing-songy cadence of schoolyard taunts. Raised in London, reared in art school, she looks like a model, hollers like daddy's little girl. She's hard to pin down politically, but it's safe to say she prefers to stir the pot. Whether you need music for the club or the uprising, Maya Arulpragasam has your back: "M.I.A. coming back with power power!"

Last year, M.I.A. was denied a working visa in the United States. So instead of settling down with the hottest American producers, she went elsewhere - India, Trinidad, Australia, Jamaica - to make new album Kala, her followup to brilliant '05 debut Arular. So I'd like to personally thank our immigration department: The organic sounds M.I.A. was forced to find overseas helped her make one of the best albums of the year.

Arular, named after her father, was aggressive, raw, war as interpreted through a child's eyes. Kala is about her mother and what it's like to both love and confront a violent man. There are still straight-up political bangers: On 20 Dollar or the cost of an assault rifle in Africa, M.I.A. chides today's club kids for their apathy. On Paper Planes, she samples the Clash's Straight to Hell and sums up the state of the world with a chorus of gunshots and cash registers.

But for the most part, this one's for the girls. On the street-festival largeness of Boyz, she both craves and agonizes over street thugs. On Birdflu, which merges percolating Indian dhol drums and dialogue from Tamil film Jayam, she's less sympathetic, calling men "selfish little roamers" and warning: "Don't order me about, I'm an outlaw from the badland."

The best song, and maybe the most autobiographical, is the over-the-top Jimmy, a Bollywood beaut with a disco beat, sci-fi laser bursts and ELO-type synth, all while M.I.A. begs her lover to "take me on a truck to Darfur." But the song ultimately leans more toward longing than Third World conflict, as she attempts something close to singing: "Got to get you somewhere warm, so you get me all alone."

Two years ago, I saw M.I.A. perform at the annual Coachella fest in the California desert. They put her in a small tent; by the end of the show, thousands of people, drenched in sweat, chanting her lyrics, were spilling out of her performance, not quite sure what just happened, but fully aware that they'd never seen anything like it. I'm still not sure who or what M.I.A. really is, either, but it sure is refreshing trying to figure her out.

Sean Daly can be reached at sdaly@sptimes.com">href="mailto:sdaly@sptimes.com" mce_href="mailto:sdaly@sptimes.com">sdaly@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8467. His Pop Life blog is at blogs.tampabay.com/popmusic.

[Last modified August 23, 2007, 16:00:45]