Kala

Over a few years, British musician MIA - aka Mathangi Arulpragasam - has realised far-flung ambitions.
Her 2005 debut album "Arular" proved an electric shock to the system, its ballsy mashup of street styles and pop hooks earning a Mercury nomination in U.K.
Mia's new album "Kala" is named after her mother, but like "Arular" it mixes up musical ideas from around the world and crams them into a club- and radio-friendly collage of tunes.
This CD drives her music in even more intrepid directions
In fact this time, rather than work with British producers such as Steve Mackey of Pulp and the pop guru Richard X, MIA travelled widely to authentically capture the world music that intrigues her.
The result is fantastic.
"Birdflu" features the sound of traditional Indian drummers, whom MIA recorded on a trip to the sub-continent last year.
"Down River" throbs with didgeridoo she recorded at a workshop for aboriginal children in Australia. The tribal pound of "Hussel", meanwhile, was recorded with a Nigerian-born London-based rapper, African Boy.
Whereas "Arular" was dominated by bouncy funk carioca beats, "Kala" feels like a more mixed, cosmopolitan affair.Recorded in India, Australia, Trinidad, Japan, Britain and Baltimore with producers including Switch and Blaqstarr, it sounds like an infectious international travelogue.
Looking at that luminous, vibrant front cover, or the ludicrously colourful video for "Boyz", M.I.A. seems more like a textile artist than anything else.
If the driving force behind her music is a restless, globe-trotting quest for identity, that makes sense - a collage is a beautiful way of drawing disparate pieces together to create a whole that exists as something important in itself.
"Kala" meets the critics head on, taking her dancefloor smash-and-grab sound global.
She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically ("Take me on a genocide tour/Take me on a trip to Darfur") and musically. But a knockout's a knockout, however messy the bout.
All in all, Kala is an intense, body-shaking, mind-bending album, far more ambitious than most pop around.
My favourite tracks are "Paper Planes", "20 Dollars" and "Turn".

Mia's beats are good reminiscent of the 1980's and early 1990's is diffidently apart of the "Look at Me" generation thank goodness she has something worth listening to.

We also Funked the war with this CD at the 5th Anniversary protestsin Washington, DC MIA Funks it up. Power to the People.

Plain and simple, some people hate originality. If it isn't your gangsta rap, tight pants and shirt wearing little rockers, spewing out the same garbage over and over and over again, then people don't want anything to do with it. MIA is an amazing artist and is freshening up the air with her material.

My friends insisted that I, as a DJ, listen to this, probably in hopes that I would love it and fit it into as many sets as possible. They couldn't have been more disappointed, because I loathed it the first time I heard it--I could not, for the life of me, understand why M.I.A. was receiving so much industry buzz and artist acclaim. I still wonder whether she's a true innovator, and whether her star can rise any further than it has already. But regardless, an amazing thing happened. I couldn't get the CD out of my car player, and the more I listened, the more I was enamoured with the songs, the production, her quirky and oft-nonsensical lyrics, and the flow of the songs (Timbaland-produced "Come Around," "The Turn," and the vaguely Sneaker Pimps-sounding "$20" are the standout tracks). Perhaps the secret is Kala's deceptively simple-sounding arrangements; I don't know. But one is missing out on something irrepressibly fun, edgy, and savvy if one dismisses it at first listen Multiple plays will, I assure you, make you a believer in the end.