M.I.A.

M.I.A.’s Kala is an album positively dripping with sex. M.I.A.’s delivery lies somewhere between the caterwauling of the Spice Girls and the smooth tones of Lilly Allen, but she delivers her songs at a frantic pace, spitting rhymes and spouting choruses at a speed only exceeded by the positively out of control tribal drums she unleashes on tracks like “Bird Flu” and “Boyz.” Production is absolutely phenomenal on the entire disc, featuring rich and full percussion throughout, and diverse sound effects over top. Children never seem to stop yelling in M.I.A’s world, like “Mango Pickle Down River,” which resides just this side of the billabong from annoying, and features a group of kids, the Wilcannia Mob. The guns loading don’t stop either; in “Down River” M.I.A. shouts “See me see me bubblin’ quietly/See me see me actin like you aim at me” a shotgun loads, and blasts into the pounding beat and the chorus, “Guns out! Guns out!”


Kala races you around like a car chase through a bustling African market. And M.I.A. has the attitude to sit behind the wheel. “I’m gonna warm my buns with summa summa summa summa /Now I’m Sittin down chillin on gunpowda/Strike match light fire move that yellow cord Mia/ M.I.A comin back with power power” she spits on the hot hot “Bamboo Banger.” Even when she chills out, like on “Paper Planes,” she still tells us “I fly like paper/I get high like planes/If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name/” Other highlights of this frenetic trip include the stripped down “Come Around,” featuring Timbaland, which shows off M.I.A.’s smooth flow, and “Jimmy,” dub-disco with soaring 70s synth lines, and “$20,” which grinds out organs somewhere close to New Order’s “Blue Monday” but pulls out The Pixies’ classic chorus “Where is my mind.” Then she shrieks and the percussion picks up again. This is Kala, and M.I.A., in a microcosm, and I’ll be damned if I’d have it any other way.

by Simon Burger



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