MIA

true nuff

I'm not very keen on Born Free but the particularly pointed kind of schadenfreude you get on these threads whenever MIA releases something that's any less than storming is totally lame.

the particularly pointed kind of schadenfreude you get on these threads whenever MIA releases something that's any less than storming is totally lame.

otm

Also, as much as I like her music, the notion that she could have a twitter feed that wasn't completely obnoxious and ridiculous is kind of amusing.

real talk

I think there would be less schadenfreude if people weren't consistently told by her, lots of her fans and lots of the press that everything she did was revolutionary cutting edge life changing uber-music. Her schtick can be pretty annoying if it's not backed up by really good music.

She is a pop star. For better or for worse she is clearly trying to be very popular or effect popular culture in some way. I like that she prances around, making ridiculous statements, and courting attention. She wants as many people to hear her music as possible. Her music is better, more vital etc... than most of the other dross that is in or near to the charts.

oh my fucking god it's that old "pop stars must say stupid shit and look dumb at all times" chestnut again

Sorry. I find this model 'stupid shit look dumb' quite entertaining. Certainly makes these boards a whole lot more interesting if a little whiny and self important.

CNN story:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/27/mia.music.video/index.html?hpt=T2

The video's 'disturbing' but rather shallow, I thought.

"If you look at M.I.A.'s life, there is a history of political activism," Pasulka said. "She's the daughter of a revolutionary who fought for an independent state in Sri Lanka, so she is obviously trying to make a political statement."

...

"I would say she out-GaGaed Lady GaGa," Pasulka said. "This has the potential for even more coverage than all of the interest that surrounded 'Telephone.' "

love the song, dig the video conceptually but think the execution is weak

(lol, no pun intended)

M.I.A.: Out-GaGaing Lady GaGa in 2010.

Ga(lang)Ga(lang).

fuck's sake why are there people taking her "revolutionary" "activism" remotely seriously

i don't really mind that she's kind of stupid as long as she comes up with banging hooks like "bamboo banga" or hits upon an observational vein that works like "hussel" but this is ridic

Love how open that person is about exploiting her "politics."

maybe it's empty vaguely rebellious shtick, but she's squawky and it fits with her squawkiness

thought at first the video was gonna be like america was no longer merely in the green zone of a hypermegaglobalwar which woulda been a more interesting contention to me, but then the redheads thing feels gimmicky and yeah, shallow. too entrenched already as a facile metaphor for discrimination to have some other meaning here. i guess the state deriving its authority from coercive force is a meaning that remains: that's scary & acquiescing is in tension with being "born free".

m.i.a. is passé. pasulka needs to be more forward-thinking: who will out-gaga the woman who out-gaga'ed lady gaga?

although the fact that he was rounding up redheads is kind of quirky.

It reminds me of when grade school teachers try to show why the Jim Crow South was unjust by segregating the class into blue eyed and brown eyed students and treating them differently. It's meant to show the arbitrary or absurd nature of discrimination but to most people it's just lol u silly.

it's meant to show the arbitrary or absurd nature of discrimination

is it here tho? i don't see how it can when the obvious parallel to this vid is raids on households in asia & the middle east and wartime atrocities. could it be a comment of some kind on immigration or racial profiling (spheres where the state is a coercive actor)? or just a "quirky" non-idea.

I like the idea and the message behind the video, but the message probably would have gotten through better with a little less graphic violence. A lot of people will never see this because of exaggerated graphicness. And, oh, I guess the gratious nudity early on is alone enough to get it banned from most American channels.

racial profiling ethnic cleansing

I like the idea and the message behind the video, but the message probably would have gotten through better with a little less graphic violence.

geir..............otm?

http://stevehickey.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/70srapture.jpg

what was "banana skit" about?

bananas?

it's fun to say banana

true

i always imagined it was like some dis track against dizzee rascal because of that line in "Fix Up Look Sharp" where he says BANAWNAW all like a British person.

That's a stupid idea, but otherwise it's just inscrutable.

lol at that after u being all OCCAMSRAZOR4LIFE on the viking thread

doubt mia would find an east londoner saying banana as remarkable as u do

EFIL4ROZARSMACCO

i dunno, she's a west londoner, which is probably like 5 accent zones away

kind of bummed that i keep getting an error msg when i attempt a "vote for your favorite #miap4k tweet" poll

i've admitted that it's probably a very wrong interpretation, but she opens her critically adored first album with a sketch that makes no sense to me

or anyone? did like everyone in their EMP paper that year talk about how great "banana skit" is because everyone understood it but me?

I think the sense in it is mostly

it's fun to say banana

― dipset infiltrator (zvookster), Tuesday, April 27, 2010 3:41 PM Bookmark

this shit is bananas

ha, I think I was privately thinking "T/S 'B-A-N-A-N-A-S' vs 'BA-NA-NAAAH'" in my head all that year

i think there might actually be a thread to that effect somewhere

talking of pop stars being "activists", amerie is being super-eloquent and passionate about some new arizonan immigration law on twitter right now. where are the cnn articles lauding her for this.

so "banana skit" is an english lesson for refugees in which the practice word is "banana," the fruit so tied to colonialism/imperialism that it spawned the term "banana republic"?

english language/american culture as colonizing force

then again, sometimes a banana is just a banana

some of that too but mostly

it's fun to say banana

― dipset infiltrator (zvookster), Tuesday, April 27, 2010 3:41 PM Bookmark

“I wrote that because when I was at school that was the type of shit that you have to learn first when you’re an immigrant and you get sent to a special school to learn English. And I was always pronouncing everything really badly because the way you say it in Tamil is totally different. I mean, the syllables, the way they come out your mouth is so different: ba-na-na. And that’s how that came about. I just wanted to make quite autobiographical.”

i guess that makes sense? Did all 4000 rock critics who jizzed on the album understand that? Or did they all just blow by the fact that the first 45 seconds of the year's most "important" album kind of made no sense?