Hype Gets It Wrong Again

Is M.I.A. truly condescending, or does she really regard herself as a victim? The cynic in all of us would like to regard her as a nuisance and a loudmouth, but the fact is that she has some valid points: we in America don't exactly know how to regard a pop star from a developing country? Perhaps that's why we have doomed M.I.A. to a future of meager sales in the United States?

No. It's because her records are absolutely uninteresting.

Kala, the Sri Lankan pop star's latest release, is probably setting fire to the brains of bloggers and Pitchfork writers everywhere. So far, it's been hailed as M.I.A.'s "great leap forward" and "daring." It has pretty much been assured consideration for Album Of The Year honors among journalists.

Bullshit.

Kala, like M.I.A.'s previous effort Arular, is nothing to write home about. The production of the record has been the selling point, but there isn't much here to distinguish the record from others you'd probably hear in the club (which is the record's destination, no doubt), and the beats themselves distort M.I.A.'s ardently political lyrics to the point that they bear no consequence on the direction of the album. Pardon me for suggesting this, but when people are doing the bump-and-grind to some hot tracks, they're probably not thinking about the economic situations in various third-world countries. But M.I.A. wants to have it both ways: she wants to make that successful party-rap record that gets her (admittedly) important message across.

Of course, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You can't exalt frivolity while yearning for depth in one's music. It just doesn't work that way. It's M.I.A.'s attempt to go with both extremes that ends up making Kala a failure, even if her use of African rhythmic instruments has been done many times before (Remain In Light? Graceland?). Ignore the Pitchfork-generated hype: it's not daring, it's not powerful. It is, in fact, nothing at all.