421. M.I.A., "Arular"

 


This is such a great album.  I forgot how good this album was, even though I remember buying it on iTunes and putting it on my brushed aluminum iPod mini and listening to it on my long walks through Golden Gate Park and around the city in 2005.  It was just such a explosion of sound that I was blown away by it.  And now, listening to it all these years later, it totally holds up.

M.I.A. has a pretty amazing backstory that involves growing up during the Sri Lankan civil war and moving to London as a refugee and going to art school and just casual things like "She met Justine Frischmann, front woman of the British band Elastica, through her friend Damon Albarn at an Air concert in 1999, and Frischmann commissioned Arulpragasam to create the cover art for the band's 2000 album, The Menace, and video document their American tour."  You know, just usual young adult stuff.  Then she grew up and got famous and was engaged to an heir to the Seagrams liquor fortune and so on.  All beyond the scope of this post.

I think the real genius of this album - and don't get me wrong, this is not a revolutionary insight by any means - is the incredible blending of genre and style made possible by her proficiency with the Roland MC-505 and her own musical vocabulary and unique voice.  So in "Sunshowers," for example, there's some pretty overtly political stuff:

Semi-9 and snipered 'im
On that wall they posted 'im
They cornered 'im
And then just murdered 'im
He told them he didn't know them
He wasn't there they didn't know him
They showed him a picture then
Ain't that you with the muslims?
He had Colgate on his teeth
And Reebok Classics on his feet
At a factory he does Nike
And then helps the family

Which is then punctuated with a lilting, melodic chorus that sounds almost childlike.  The juxtaposition is jarring and beautiful.  The lyrics on a lot of the album are obviously informed by her turbulent past, and her family's involvement in Sri Lankan affairs, but there is also just the joyful sexuality of "Hombre" ("Excuse me, little hombre/Take my number, call me/I can get squeaky/So you could come and oil me") and the playfully assertive "U.R.A.Q.T" which I just want to say that any song that samples the Sanford & Son theme (and Redd Foxx saying "You big dummy!") is a winner in my book.  

If you haven't listened to this in a while, it's worth throwing on again.  

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