Author: Christina LeBlanc
“Hands up,
Guns out,
Represent the world town.”
Sounding reminiscent of a third-world radical, M.I.A. spits these lyrics into the microphone with all the passion of a revolutionary. This hook to “World Town,” the eighth track on M.I.A.’s newly released album Kala, completely opposes her previous record Arular. Kala focuses on the plight of people globally, rather than her own struggle growing up as a third-world refugee. Laid over fierce beats influenced by reggae, Jamaican dancehall, electronica, Bollywood and hip-hop from Nigeria to Baltimore, Kala mixes serious issues with gritty, catchy beats, creating an unstoppable new sound.
Timbaland was originally set to produce the record, but M.I.A. was denied a visa to work in the United States, forcing her to look elsewhere. This inconvenience incidentally led to the creation of the most diverse albums of the year. M.I.A. replaced the seasoned producer’s smooth beats for rougher sounds found during her travels to India, Jamaica, Trinidad and Africa. Kala does, however, feature the song “Come Around,” a Timbaland production.
The first track on the album, “Bamboo Banger,” sets the tone with a simple beat that samples a Tamil composer, and features lyrics about tourists in a Hummer traveling through the third world with a child banging on the hood. Although focusing on politics, “Banger” contains the cockiness typical to MCs. M.I.A. immediately asserts her confidence with lyrics like “M.I.A.’s comin’ back with the power, power.”
The rest of the album fulfills M.I.A.’s promise, with a consistent barrage of diverse beats and a lyrical fluidity surprising on such a jarring album. Kala‘s recent single “Boyz” is also a standout with its Jamaican undertones and insistent hook. Other standouts on the album include “20 Dollar,” focusing on the normalcy of the impoverished by stating, “We still like T.I. / we still look fly,” referring to workers living in a shantytown. Kala also references The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind” and includes the track “Hustle,” which features Afrikanboy rapping about the hustle of living in Africa.
“Paper Planes” and “Jimmy,” two of the slower tracks on the album, also leave a strong impression. “Paper Planes” samples gunshots followed by the clicking of a cash register in the refrain and speaks of her visa troubles. “Jimmy” is the love ballad of the album, done M.I.A.-style. Sampling Bollywood beats, M.I.A. speaks of a love gone to fight in an ambiguous third-world revolution and the struggle of having to wait on an uncertain return.
Kala relentlessly dishes out strong beats with in-your-face lyrics, creating an album that is both catchy and skilled. Throughout the album, M.I.A. manages to show another side of the global poor by refusing to fall into the cliches of “protest songs” of previous political artists. Rather, she simply presents an everyday struggle in her lyrics rarely displayed in popular culture. Kala is the album to beat in hip-hop and M.I.A. is a trendsetter for music globally.
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