Music Preview: M.I.A. - Kala

By: Raymond Cummings

Monday May 28, 2007

Almost famous?
A strong, critically adored debut = famous producers all up in your grill for album numero dos. That's how things are shaping up for ex-Sri Lankan turned Londoner turned Baile Funk-lovin' rapper M.I.A. (ala Maya Arulpragasam) whose fiercely spare and political Arular brought all the rock-write boys to the yard way back in 2005 - even if it didn't move, say, 50 Cent-level numbers. New, leaked non-single "Bird Flu" has the distinction of not even sounding like a proper song - it's more like a living, enraged avalanche of percussive and synth strikes M.I.A. attempts to tame in her unimitable, often indecipherable, urgent style; she is heard to declare, at one point: "I'm too cool to be a Rocawear model!" This is good news for anyone fearing she might switch up her subject matter to make more bank.

The album "Bird Flu" will appear on, titled Kala, will see release on August 21 via Interscope Records. Previously, M.I.A. worked with relative nobodies to craft an abrasive, aggressive sound with tropical roots; who the eff, for instance, is Richard X? Producer/DJ Diplo, who was all over 2004's M.I.A. bootleg fave Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1, is better known, and he assisted in helming the boards for Kala - but so did Timbaland (Missy Elliott, Bjork, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, etc.), Three 6 Mafia, and DJ Blaqstarr (not to mention some as-of-now low-level dudes calling themselves Switch, Bangladesh, and Danja).

Your friendly, neighborhood Static previewers ain't gon front: (1) we have no idea which of these people had a hand in "Bird Flu," (2) we haven't been able to get ahold of other supposedly leaked album tracks like "Boyz" (3) we don't know whether or not there's a Santa Claus.

All we can tell you is that there's a contradictory situation here, because "Bird Flu" is even rougher and more uncompromising than anything on M.I.A.'s first album was, but some the people she hired for the second go-round are responsible for today's biggest pop hits. This is where we'd usually advise you to "do the math," but the math in this case appears to be a high-level trig equation that takes, like, 70 blackboards to solve.