It's rare when an album legitimately stuns you with something so good that years from now, people will look back and say, God, they just don't make music like that anymore.""
M.I.A.'s Kala is one of those albums. It is an album akin to the self-titled debut by Neu! or Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation - a gigantic genre-bashing step forward, a work so innovative that, decades after its release, its musical ideas and suggestions are still being digested and diffused into our culture.
The funny thing, though: This kind of effusive praise was smeared all over music blogs months before the release of M.I.A.'s debut, Arular. When that album finally did hit stands, what the curious - if not suspicious - consumer got was not a life-changing piece of art but a record that was alternately thrilling and competent. Some tracks like ""Galang"" and ""Bucky Done Gun"" were exciting slices of hip-hop, electro, dancehall and Brazilian funk, music that showcased what can happen when hip-hop is truly reconciled and synthesized with the music of the non-Western world. But much of the album consisted of fair raps set against standard beats - not the kind of stuff to set the world on fire.
Nothing remotely boring exists in the world of Kala. Each track - with the exception of the Timbaland collaboration that closes the album - is a dense, chaotic collage of rap, raga, funk and electronic sounds awash with musical ideas that suggest very exciting things are on the horizon if anyone else can pick up on what M.I.A. is doing.
The album kicks off with a fat-ass bass line, lyrics lifted from the Modern Lovers, M.I.A.'s snarling, detached flow and singing from a Tamil-language film. M.I.A., real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, is a Tamil Sri Lankan, placing her ethnically on the losing side of the civil wars in her birth country. Her father was an activist-militant who gave more time to the revolutionary cause than his family, so Arulpragasam was essentially raised by her mother. Third-world politics and Sri Lankan revolution certainly find their way into this music, but usually not in the form of lyrics - it is M.I.A.'s tendency to create musical chaos in order to represent and make sense of the dangerously unfair world around her.
The album's most danceable song, ""Boyz,"" is one of the most celebratory, life-affirming songs in recent memory - the kind of blissful chaos only people who have dealt with real chaos can create. Stuttering vocals, a cheeky horn section and synthesizers combine to make the sort of arrhythmic dance music that James Chance was making in the late '70s, only here the music is more concerned with delirious celebration than intellectual experimentation.
The crowning achievement on this album of glistening gems is ""Paper Planes."" Over a gorgeous guitar bit from the Clash's ""Straight to Hell,"" M.I.A. raps and sings about illegal activities ranging from fake-visa making, to robbery, to murder. Her voice is sedate and haunting, inviting you into a world of people who do the unthinkable because there isn't much left for them to do.
Her voice nearly cracks as she sings, ""We pack and deliver like UPS trucks / already going hell for pumping that gas"" before a chorus of no-nonsense children gleefully tell you all they want to do is shoot you and take your money. The result is one of the most sublime, unforgettable songs in any genre of music.
What makes Kala so compelling is that throughout this album - the moody soundscapes of ""The Turn,"" the deep jungle beats of ""Bird Flu"" or the feverous synths and staccato beats in ""XR2"" - everything is held together cohesively by a sense of planned chaos ruled by M.I.A.'s laid back, dominating voice. The way she delivers a line makes it seem as if she's got the whole world figured out and couldn't give a damn whether anyone is smart enough to listen to what she has to say.
Someday, after the musical fabric of this album has changed the way many people approach music, it will probably become clear that people were listening. But for now, it's just exciting to hear someone venturing into the realms of creative chaos and bringing back unpolished bits of genius.
