M.I.A.’s KALA Changed My Life

– Written by Peyton Andino –

Her fans hail her as the female Kanye West. Her detractors see her as a terrorist sympathiser. Despite all this, Mathangi Arulpragasam, more widely known as M.I.A., fought and cemented herself as an influential musician whose works speak on their own. M.I.A. is unabashedly political, a Tamil woman unafraid to discuss genocide, speak on rights issues, and speak her mind despite her ongoing issues with visas.

M.I.A.’s most recent endeavours are best described as pandering to a growing group of people who are worried about 5G internet, mind control, and vaccinations. A clothing line dedicated to “protecting your brain,” modelled by her son and Arulpragasam herself on the website www.ohmni.com, has made rounds on the internet after years of speculation concerning the artist’s mental health. Between the ramblings of government control, evil vaccinations, and online instigations lays a complex artist who continues to deliver high-quality albums.

My first discovery of M.I.A. was through the radio. On some hits station my parents had turned on in our Ford, the announcer signified we were about to hear one of the most popular songs out at the moment. I was young, and couldn’t hear the full context from the compressed audio, nor could I understand it. What rang clear was her voice and the sting of electric guitar that complimented her deadpan yet over pronounced delivery.

Since then, I couldn’t get enough of M.I.A. With age, I began to discover the context whenever that song came on. Throughout the years, I began to notice the small intricacies that revealed themselves to me with each listen. The little snaps periodically looped, the gunshots within the course, the chanting in childish yet teasing voices that rang through like a choir.

Little by little, I began to notice how raw her lyricism is. Behind her comparison and personification, M.I.A was conveying a story about her personal experience, an inability to obtain a visa to a country she’s lived in for years. She paints herself and other immigrants in the exaggerated stereotype that they’re only there to harm others, steal jobs and money from those already living in these areas, and get high.

Younger Peyton knew that M.I.A. was cool, far before I knew what cool meant.

And so, my first real introduction to rap albums was M.I.A.’s KALA. Named after her seamstress mother, Arulpragasam describes it as more feminine than her previous record. This choice of words can be especially exemplified through the tracks “Jimmy,” “XR2,” and ironically, “Boyz.”

There is a hidden version of Boyz which features Jay-Z. This cannot be accessed officially online anymore, due to M.I.A.’s performance alongside Madonna at the 2012 SuperBowl where she had raised her middle finger towards the camera. After the following lawsuit where they reportedly demanded around $16 million in damages, her relationship with the Roc Nation founder grew rocky and the version now remains hidden and holds the title for the first song I attempted to access through decidedly unofficial methods. On this unreleased version, M.I.A. and Jay-Z go on to criticise the money George W. Bush spent on war and how little they invested in the less fortunate that live in their own country in comparison.

I often wondered what made me love her music so much. Her production was and continues to be polarising while her opinions are now more divisive than ever before. As I sat in front of the family computer and stared in awe at her music videos, my schoolwork lay discarded beside me. She entranced me, choirs of layered feminine voices and migraine-inducing visuals making my eyes glaze over. My younger self had found an artist who wasn’t afraid to be weird, and it was such a relief that I wasn’t alone.

A track on the album that stands out to me is “Mango Pickle Down River,” a collaboration between M.I.A. and extremely young indigenous Australian rap group Wilcannia Mob whose members ranged from nine to fourteen. The song utilises the didgeridoo and beatboxing to create a memorable beat that these young boys simply dance over, while M.I.A. adds a childlike rhyme scheme to fit precisely into the song.

This song took a while to grow on me. The didgeridoo rumbles over itself creating a dissonance that is somehow harmonic, while the rough audio behind the children’s voices welcomes you into their world. The boys are inviting you into their lives, describing the mundane under a childish flow that makes you feel as if your cousin is telling you a story about their day. It was perfect, a conversation that you instantaneously feel welcome in that additionally gave a spotlight to the indigenous peoples of Australia.

“Hussel,” featuring Afrikan Boy, has one of the best beats in the album. Utilising her signature reliance on drums and repeating high-pitched chorus, M.I.A. uses minimal production and overlapping voices to create one of the peaks of the album. Afrikan Boy’s voice skips over itself as he berates the listeners who feel as if it’s hard to gain footing in the more privileged Western countries while his birth country of Nigeria suffers soaring crime rates.

I knew I was privileged. I grew up in a safe neighbourhood with my loving family, had a roof over my head and food to eat. Although slightly comical, being a young girl tuning into this album of political outrage and world issues while staring at her Mac computer in the Beaches opened my eyes to those unnoticed at the time. Times like those helped shape my now steady political worldview while also allowing me to look deeper into the conflicts that plagued our world.

To finish off the album, iconic 2000s producer Timbaland hops in. “Come Around” is a slightly offensive dance track that feels as if Nelly Furtado could come in at any minute. It’s hypnotising, with her signature backing chants and instruments from across the world proving that the same formula can create vastly different tracks. Timbaland throws in some questionable lyrics, referring to a “teepee” when the song may have not needed the reference at all, but still delivers a cohesive yet off putting ending to an amazing album.

M.I.A. is truly exceptional. Despite her shortcomings in terms of communication and online presence, you cannot deny her amazing artistry and usage of sounds. Arulpragasam is a maestro of noise, this album being a masterclass in what the Western musical hivemind considers world music and how to apply differing techniques to create a cohesive project. KALA is feminine, an album that reflects on female outrage and the desperate fight for more than the circumstances provide one with.

This album sits with the rest of my records, its vibrant dust jacket of glitches and dissolving pixels around the artist’s face. It’s unique, eye-catching, and otherworldly. Despite how I may disagree with her and how I’ve changed from the gap-toothed bespectacled girl that first heard “Paper Planes” in that dusty car, one thing remains clear.

Mathangi Arulpragasam is cool and has been, even before I knew what that word meant.