MIA

I can totally buy that for M.I.A., the lyrics are from the perspective of DA. For me however, it comes across mostly like word salad with some vague allusions to suicide bombers and some other stuff thrown in to show that M.I.A. has a passing knowledge of current events.

am i wrong in assuming that the "a bomber has to love up dzhen" line is supposed to sound like "obama has to...", the same way lovalot sounds like love allah?

i mean, no reason to namedrop obama there, but neither is there any reason to say hu jintao.

i had no idea (and don't really care) about the backstory but "lovalot" is my favorite song on the album mostly cause of the awesome awesome dancehall sample

the way that "Yamaha" sorta sounds like "you're my heart" in The-Dream song real drives home how shitty and lousy the "Lovealot" pun is

that is one gigantic stretch u are making

listen to the song, dude

if it was intentional or coincidence, it's still 800x better then MIA's 12th-grader punnery

comparison doesn't add or take anything to/from either song. no connection.

agree w/ whiney -- my roomate assumed it was 'youre my heart'

sorry, don't hear that at all

i never heard "you're my heart" in "yamaha" either, but it makes total sense to me tbh

the thing with "love a lot"/"love allah" is that "i love a lot" is a phrase that barely makes sense, so i think it lends itself to being heard a different way, i.e. "i love allah", which actually makes sense

i don't think one pun is particularly better than the other, altho dream's fits better in the context of the song

not you're my ho? isn't that more his style?

not at all, really

okay. heart is sweeter.

http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2010/08/music-promtion-covers-up-silver-lake-mural/

I guess MIA wasn’t satisfied with just burning her bridges with Switch and Diplo, she’s gotta burn them with Echo Park too, both hipster and regular EP folk alike.
Ironic considering she’s such a champion of minorities rights.

Ah, the Echo Park Hipster, a tragically forgotten minority.

so in less than ten words, can someone sum up why M.I.A.'s newie is getting less critical love than Kala? I have it coming ground from UPS today, just curious to see if my initial reaction is similar....

she ate truffle fries; people have it in for her

backlash was gearing before then imo, neither "xxxo" nor "born free" really got a consensus-positive reception. real answer = she made an abrasive, "difficult" and uncatchy album.

Don't let the bad press fool you, it really is a shit album.

Rev, did you sleep last night!? You've been all over the place the last eight hours.

i would just like to say that i had a basket of truffle fries last night and they were awesome.

I slept this morning

I was trying to pull an all-nighter but gave up

WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE UPS PEOPLE WITH MY COPY OF THIS ALBUM

apparently Brown can't do shit for me

Rich (misappropriated) thread.

Late to say, but:

__Strictly speaking, "Paper Planes" isn't a sample. It doesn't actually use "Straight to Hell," but imitates it. The melody is different.

__Totally with Tipsy and Contenderizer on "Straight to Hell." It's also about the economic and drug fallout of the war, the only off-note being the GI slang "Mama-san" and "Papa-san" put in the mouth of a Vietnamese kid, though that works too.

__Re: Brother Ali: Boredom comes from within.

__Re: her politics: It's tough to deny that the whole gestalt of M.I.A. is part of what makes her great, a sort of half-subliminal defiance of the rulers of the earth (and anyone who defends their way of thinking as only right and obvious) and the way that defiance registers musically like it does in real life, garbled and felt rather than spelled out. I love how the new music seems to evoke this process of realization, coming together with the sudden chaotic force of revelation.

Nobody will remember what she said in an interview 20 years from now, and anyone looking her up will probably decode the way O. Nate does "terrorism," a line of thinking familiar to more "Paper Planes" fans than we're crediting. Any high-school kid today grew up with the War on Terror, more immigrants at school, gangster rap as pop, and a lot of unfocused mistrust and rage. You don't need to know or care what M.I.A. thinks about Sri Lanka to "get" how she's connecting with all this. I think her political message is both fairly obvious and more Dada-abstract than the Clash, but still the kind of radical that will earn you an NYT takedown.

__Musically, the tradition she's working is spoken-punk in love with rap/dancehall/grime/favela/Baltimore club/whatever, not any of those things per se, so I think her amateurish appeal is somewhere in between--the melodies are very Beat Happening. That's also a clear contrast from somebody like K'Naan, an actual rapper with a longer lyric sheet to show for it, which means he has to explain himself a bit more, where M.I.A. can deal in suggestive punk shorthand. When she appears on something like a remix of Busy Signal's "Tic Toc," her drawn-out style just seems out of place. She's got tunes galore, but they're hinted at rather than sung, like so much punk. Comparing her to rappers misses what's good about her.

__K'Naan's right about Somalia, by the way.

__Nothing wrong with "you should pay attention to this rapper," Deej--the best kind of presence IMO!

__Thank-yous for the heads ups on Sleigh Bells, Wreckx-n-Effect, Gucci Mane, Spectral Display (nothing wrong with those lyrics), Skinny Puppy, more I forgot.

__Re: the Bjork comparison: So did she go down some funky R&B/rap vein I missed?

__U2 hate is like gravity around here, but I'd put "Cedars of Lebanon" on any M.I.A.-era epochal politics mix.

__Bill Cosby's mom as M.I.A. backlash: "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out."

__sizeism and "retarded" = okay on ILX, I guess?

__Disinterest /= uninterest.

__This is a great album. The sequencing is perfect. The sound is amazing. I found it irresistible on first listen, without having heard or read anything about it, without reading this thread or even knowing there was an NYT article. I've listened to it a couple dozen times and wake up with it playing in my head every day, which I can't say about the last two, even after going back to them. The weakest track is "It Iz What It Iz," and even that is an amazing piece of atmosphere, kind of a Big Audio Dynamite digression. Love how "XXXO" paraphrases the melody of "Lean on Me," the siren-voice end of "Teqkilla," the rage that builds before love. (The bonus tracks make a good EP, but would gum this up.)

__Love the Letterman appearance--very Muppets! Kind of wish she had let her kid play the smashing-notes part on the lower end of the keyboard.

Peace, all.

it came, and soon I might as well

j/k but this is good "so far" from what I can tell

Great post Pete.

yes

Pete's post = /\/\ \/ P

__Re: her politics: It's tough to deny that the whole gestalt of M.I.A. is part of what makes her great, a sort of half-subliminal defiance of the rulers of the earth (and anyone who defends their way of thinking as only right and obvious) and the way that defiance registers musically like it does in real life, garbled and felt rather than spelled out. I love how the new music seems to evoke this process of realization, coming together with the sudden chaotic force of revelation.

Nobody will remember what she said in an interview 20 years from now, and anyone looking her up will probably decode the way O. Nate does "terrorism," a line of thinking familiar to more "Paper Planes" fans than we're crediting. Any high-school kid today grew up with the War on Terror, more immigrants at school, gangster rap as pop, and a lot of unfocused mistrust and rage. You don't need to know or care what M.I.A. thinks about Sri Lanka to "get" how she's connecting with all this. I think her political message is both fairly obvious and more Dada-abstract than the Clash, but still the kind of radical that will earn you an NYT takedown.

seems kind of dumm. mia isn't (or shouldn't be) stupid, so i guess her 'being an idiot' shtick is deliberate? which is maybe even more stupid. the bit about defiance being felt and not spelt out, and the sudden chaotic force of realization is some pretty writing but still, i think, complete bullshit. im not sure who is ventriloquizing for whom there. kind of don't think that there is a chaotic force of revelation felt by people who are actually being fucked over by the rulers of the world. imagine they perceive their lot right quick.

if the concept is that the world is chaotic and horrible and mia just reflects that by making really bad records, then, again, dismissive wanking gesture really.

i just reread that big long argument i had w/ miccio & j0rdan & whoever else upthread. i gotta say i think its weird that its such a marginalized position to be straight up like "i dont think MIA is doing anything interesting at all really." its like, why is it enforced that she must be taken seriously at all levels? imo shes really not that significant of an artist in the grand scheme of things -- although it seems like she will become that way by sheer force of critical will

Pete's post = T |_ ; |) R

i just reread that big long argument i had w/ miccio & j0rdan & whoever else upthread. i gotta say i think its weird that its such a marginalized position to be straight up like "i dont think MIA is doing anything interesting at all really." its like, why is it enforced that she must be taken seriously at all levels? imo shes really not that significant of an artist in the grand scheme of things -- although it seems like she will become that way by sheer force of critical will

yeah why don't those critics review hair metal anyway? that's what the people really want, they keep forcing stuff on us. bring back ratt I say

i have no interest in rehashing this argument, but that's not at all what i was saying, or even what i was talking about

i wasnt saying u were arguing it fwiw, but i think it was the overall effect

not sure what hair metal has to do w/ this.

why'd you namecheck us if we didn't actually make the argument you're complaining about

its the subtext behind the pile-on nature of the arguments itt. why was it such a big deal that i feel like shes not doing that much shit?

having reread the entire last week of this argument i think this is the most otm thing anyone posted:

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.

it is a fool's errand at best to try to figure out why "people" like paper planes (tho if i had a gun to my head i'd actually agree with adam bruneau--whenever i've heard this song in a club it seems like people grab onto the chorus and the sound efx in partic) but i have no idea what is "challenging" about saying that m.i.a. is a weak vocalist with a very limited persona whose voice and on-record presentation don't really bring much to the table.

paper planes is a catchy tune no doubt but i think her limitations as a performer and the issues with whatever she's trying to get across lyrically also make it a v. problematic one.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, May 13, 2010 9:24 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark

im not saying i agree w/ all that (obv not, hes disagreeing w me, in part) but this seems like a much more reasoned style of debate instead of the weird circles u guys ran in trying to prove i was a hypocrit for liking rap & disliking MIA

still sore?

i mean srsly did you come back to the thread to complain Jordan and I were "unreasonable" when we laughed about the irony in your "paper planes" dismisal a few months ago?

"blap tremendo" is esperanto for "i'm still sore" iirc

also if you want me to feel bad about mocking your "ugh all paper planes is is a stolen hook a chant and a dance beat" plz don't tie my crime into some weird persecution complex about how people won't let you not care about MIA

i mean srsly did you come back to the thread to complain Jordan and I were "unreasonable" when we laughed about the irony in your "paper planes" dismisal a few months ago?

― da croupier, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 9:30 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, bcuz its indicative of a larger thing ... i can talk about a rapper & get 'i dont get why this matters at all' from 90% of ilm but everyone has to have an opinion on MIA ... the same phenomenon that gets dudes like contenderizer writing essays about big boi records & no other rap music

are you 12 years old or what

wait people pay more attention to stuff that sells & is popular? fuck I think we have a scoop here guys

what is going on here