MIA

Jaime Martinez is dope.

http://www.neetrecordings.com/jaime/#/14

one dude's (uncontroversial imo) reasons for not liking a song

you realize that this isn't at all what the thread is about, right?

spinspin, you should post more images that everyone saw on blogs two weeks ago. do you have the new interpol promo photos?

y'all are still talking about M.I.A. when a new National record just came out???

see J0rdan, it worked! I got you to stop talking about stupid shit!

we stopped talking about uffie weeks ago

and the moral of the story is...holding grudges on message boards (about pop-stars no less) is nagl.

you're calling uffie a pop star?

dude...

group hug y'all!

constant repetition = the only thing wrong with anybody's position in this thread. otherwise, it's fine to say that mia's not bringing anything to her samples, just like it's fine to call that a hollow argument.

"I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I've made."

Rolling CHALLENGING OPINIONS thread 2008

its really not fine to call it a 'hollow argument' unless u are going to put forward something worthwhile that she is doing

several such arguments have been made on this thread and you aren't interested in listening to them, though

its really not fine to call it a 'hollow argument' unless u are going to put forward something worthwhile that she is doing

― Gifted Unlimited Display Names Universal (deej)

to my mind, that's adding something. i guess to you, it isn't, but i don't think there's a right or wrong here. that's why it seems reasonable to call your argument hollow: it's predicated entirely on subjective appreciation, just like mine. unless you're really arguing that she's failing to do some necessary thing on a fundamental level. but i can't imagine what that might be, or how you'd define/measure it.

wait so both your arguments are hollow?

'cause its time to bring the fire down
throttle all this indiscretion
long enough to edify
and permanently fill this hollow

...like, just take the cadence. her voice isn't rhythmically duplicating anything in "straight to hell". not precisely, and it's not like she's mumbling, diffident, mostly buried in the mix (the way she is on "born free"). she's in control of "paper planes", making the song bend to her will, like she knows exactly where she's going and why she's hitting those beats. that interaction and command = "doing something". "born free" lacks that quality, and i think that's why i quickly tired of it. the additional noise pumps up the suicide sample, making it more aggressive and less hypnotic, but the overall vibe doesn't change much, and maya's mostly just tagging along, even on the chorus. imo.

i can understand someone not liking born free for the reasons you're explaining, but to me it's like "thank god someone took that suicide bassline and made it really loud and noisy and brought it up in the mix"

it just provides a pleasant, smoked-out ride through the verses, like driving around town on an early summer evening with nowhere to go.

its a song about robbing ppl at gunpoint iirc

yeah, but that's just silly talk. we know she's not really robbing anybody, like when we sing along and make finger-guns, we know we don't mean any harm. the song conveys no more real threat than "steal my sunshine". "straight to hell", on the other hand, is genuinely creepy, and genuinely political, even in its sonics.

i don't think i'm gonna get an okay out of you no matter what i say

i dunno i think what your posting is at least a better shot @ dialogue w/ what im saying than miccio trolling

i mean, i still disagree w/ your conclusion. i think a lighthearted we know shes not REALLY robbing song is kinda ... in poor taste? corny?

What I get out of if it's more about being in a shitty position and wishing you could take it out on the people holding you down by robbing some motherfuckers but realizing you aren't exactly M.O.P. or whatever.

ffs it's a fantasy of third-world power that has its roots in the assertion of real, actual third-world power -- global-south immigrants might not really be border-busting superagents, in the same way that MI5 dudes aren't really james bond, but they really do go from here to there to where they want to, in huge numbers, and they really are up to expropriating a whole lot of western money. granted, mostly via doing shitty jobs for shitty pay, but "paper planes" is a romanticized vision of economic reality. it's a great song, and it's smart, and catchy too. and as emblematic of real things in the world of its time as any song i can think of.

(and pretending that it's all about the sample is silly. i love the clash more than most ilxors, and that song, too. but "paper planes" finds new rhythmic and melodic possibilities in the sample. which is sort of the point of good sampling.)

it does?? can you expound on that cuz as far as i can tell its just a straight up loop.

ffs it's a fantasy of third-world power that has its roots in the assertion of real, actual third-world power -- global-south immigrants might not really be border-busting superagents, in the same way that MI5 dudes aren't really james bond, but they really do go from here to there to where they want to, in huge numbers, and they really are up to expropriating a whole lot of western money. granted, mostly via doing shitty jobs for shitty pay, but "paper planes" is a romanticized vision of economic reality. it's a great song, and it's smart, and catchy too. and as emblematic of real things in the world of its time as any song i can think of.

― women are a bunch of dudes (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:07 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

you get all this from those lyrics?? to me those lyrics are a bunch of random hustling signifiers, it might as well be a mike jones song

i mean how do u even get that shes singing from the perspective of 'global-south immigrants'

"if you catch me at the border, i got visas in my name"

"third-world democracy/ we got more records than the kgb"

and i mean the song is called paper planes, it's about the importance of documents--not having them, fabricating them, staying a step ahead of the people who want to see them. not that its politics are what made it a hit, but i don't think they hurt either. it taps into a romantic outlaw version of globalization.

as far as i can tell its just a straight up loop

right, exactly. hence the new possibilities. "straight to hell" moves on from that intro to its own basic riff and beat (which are great), but "paper planes" holds onto it and turns it into a foundation itself, opening it up and building on it.

^^^this is probably a better argument than mine (tipsy xposts). i wasn't taking the song's politics at all seriously.

still think that the feeling it generates (and i was talking more about that than its literal meaning) is vastly different and much lighter in spirit than "straight to hell". though this is another unsupported generalization in a thread overloaded with them, i'd bet that it's pop success has more to do with its seeming triviality than with its actual lyrical intent. but maybe i'm not giving the song, the singer or the audience enough credit.

so whats 'sticks and stones and weed and bombs'

'running when we hit em lethal poison in their system'

huh?? how does that relate to the american immigrant experience. its guerilla chic, i dont buy this "its actually capturing the experience of immigrants" thing. its no diff than any rap song playing off outlaw cool, except the artist in question isnt really doing much for me as a dramatic figure/pop star/hero ... the track feels a lot more like a self-congratulatory play on revolutionary/'3rd world democracy' as an affect or something that doesnt feel particularly visceral or real.

i mean 'we pack and deliver like ups trucks / already going to hell just pumping that gas' these arent 'immigrants' they're guerillas.

learn to read

yeah i mean i dont disagree w/ what hes saying as far as that goes, i just dont think its effective

'as far as that goes' meaning his second post -- his first one still seems to be reading a whole bunch into this that i dont see there

anyway yeah 'outlaw cool' is a part of the appeal for sure ... im not claiming that its like, nothing else entered into ppl's appreciation of this song, cmon. but like i said before, theres a reason this particular track was a hit & others werent, and its not just cuz shes singing about 'romantic outlaw globalization' in this one song only

right, but there are a bunch of reasons, whereas you keep going 'NA! NA! NA! THERE'S ONLY ONE!'

I think the main difference in the lyrics that would draw people in between "Paper Planes" and "Galang" (or "Born Free") is that in the former she takes time to set herself up as a sympathetic (and hence relatable) character, rather than the cathartic sloganeering of the later (which I have no problem with)

dude stfu w/ this "NANANA THERS ONLY ONE" i think ive been pretty even-handed about explaining my position w/out resorting to "LEARN TO READ" every other post

Hahaha, in your own head, I guess. You are right though, that I am being an ass now. But you are rather willfully misconstruing people's arguments here.

i dont see how im doing that -- basically every time ive posted u have made assumptions about mine, i.e. that when i say the sample is doing the heavy lifting you infer that i mean the ONLY THING HAPPENING IN THE SONG IS THE SAMPLE & etc.

i dont think MIA is a very charismatic presence, nor does she have a well-defined or particularly multi-dimensional persona. what tipsy describes upthread is pretty much of the extent of it, right? I mean cant you describe almost every song of hers that way? i mean yeah this track is less sloganeering bcuz its more like a sorta hokey facsimile of rap music outlaw swag ('fly like paper' what?) blended w/ some internationalist guerrilla warfare steez and thrown on top of one of the most under-recognized but musically appealing clash samples. I probably agree that her approach on this song helped to not drag it down in the shout-y way galang is annoying to me, but that barely qualifies as doing something interesting afaiconcerned

& before miccio posts again yes i have a similar problem with rick ross

your original point was that she isn't doing anything that the clash sample doesn't do on its own, and that the song succeeds almost entirely on the strength of that sample. which isn't a ridiculous argument, even if i disagree, but it's not self-evident and you haven't really built a strong case for it. not that i can see. i mean, so what if her swagger is hokey? how does that invalidate what she's doing? it's pop. pop doesn't depend on authorial authenticity. and how would sloganeering defeat her "doing something" with the sample anyway, even if that was her angle?

plus where do we get off challenging her authenticity in the first place? seems to be one of the most common roads of attack against her, and i don't quite get it.

i think a lighthearted we know shes not REALLY robbing song is kinda ... in poor taste? corny?

― Gifted Unlimited Display Names Universal (deej)

tipsy and deej are both kinda right wrt "paper planes" i think - it comes off like m.i.a. wanted to tie the third-world-power tropes into more conventional (and recognisable) gangsta hustling ones. obviously she doesn't do this particularly well and she hasn't thought much about why they should be linked beyond a vague "poor people...from there...poor people...here as well" shallow insight, but that's m.i.a. for ya.

(i really like the song b/c what m.i.a. excels at are the rhythmic and lyrical-nonsense hooks that enable you to ignore the ham-fistedness of the "activism" - though actually i think she IS capable of conveying her politics in a satisfying way when she does character-driven narratives, which is why "10 dollar" and "hussel" are probably my two favourite m.i.a. tracks.)