Understanding and Appreciating M.I.A's Unique Craft
Missing In Action's talent is very clear to me now.
Maya Arulpragasam is a West London born rapper who started off her music career in 2004 releasing some singles and her debut mixtape: “Piracy Funds Terrorism Volume 1” … of one… with it being a collaborate effort with American DJ and producer Diplo as at the time, it was common for mixtapes to feature or have a DJ as host for the rappers mixtape. Since then she has released 6 studio albums with her newest being “MATA” which came out on October 14th 2022 on streaming via Island Records.
MATA: My Confusing Introduction
A whole year ago in March 2024 I decided to listen to M.I.A’s (we’ll just call her Maya from now) music with the first album I played being MATA! I found her via looking for UK Hip Hop artists to listen to (with there not being much talent out there outside today of Little Simz). Before diving into an album, I like to check RateYourMusic (what the website is should be pretty self-explanatory) to see what genres listeners have gave the album as it helps me understand what I am getting into before starting the record.
Primarily it was marketed to me as an Experimental and Political Hip Hop album and… I should have looked at the secondary genres too...
I really detested this album when listening to it as its abstraction confused the life out of me! The album started off pretty solid but still wack with the intro track “F.I.A.S.O.M Pt 1” being akin to a sound collage abundant with you just wondering “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?????” with it leading into the second part of the song and... the album fell off from here.
(the photoshoots make a lot of sense now because this LP felt like an awful acid trip)
In my mini review from 2024, I wrote: “Yeah no this album was bad. It started off really fucking boring was good for like two songs then felt like a nothing burger in audio form. I am not a fan of the production here at all and Mia’s voice doesn’t really grab my attention.”
Those two songs were "Energy Freq" and "The One" with me returning to those songs! The former no longer piques my interest and the latter still bangs and I’d recommend you listen to it along with the 4th track “Beep”.
Give it a listen and tell me what you think!
Now let’s go to the present day! A whole year later in fact!
Matangi: Oh wait... this is really good!
Cut to March 2025 where I’m now a totally different person, I have a sticky note on my Macbook of artists and albums to listen to with that list having 600+ projects present in it and out of all of them, my incredible brain was like:
“You know what fuck this bitch ass list let's play M.I.A again while at college!”
The opening track here, titled “Karmageddon” was a great tone setter for the album which I love; I think more albums today should have a 1 minute mini intro track that slowly, interesting and beautifully creates the world for the album before it begins, kind of akin to how a movie will start off showing you the location of the film before introducing you to the album.
A great example of this to me is Solange’s 2019 LP: “When I Get Home” with the opening track “Saw Things I Imagined” with it sonically being so dreamy, dizzy, yet melodic and serenading just like the full project itself!
Karmageddon is the same with the quality actually increasing unlike M.A.T.A’s tracks!
Seriously though, the quality of this album is incredible! Maya is known for blending a number of genres together into a M.I.A smoothie but here it was delicious!
Maya was vocally so much more interesting on this project with her personality shining on tracks such as "Y.A.L.A" with one of my favourite lines off the record:
“If you only live once, why we keep doing the same shit”
(real)
"Bring That Noize" with her flaming flow and the hit single off the record, "Bad Girls" with that memorable and addicting chorus “Live fast die young bad girls do it well!” Basically, it was the original Mean Girls by Charli XCX.
As I stated before, Maya and her team of producers consisting of Sugu Arulpragasam, Switch, Hit-Boy, Doc McKinney and other nerds I don’t care about really love meshing a bunch of genres of music together with one of my favourite executions of that being the track "Double Bubble Trouble" (what a name).
That Reggae sample was so funny but immaculate and then that beat transforming into an Electronic Dance anthem I was so bewildered with what I was listening to but in a good way meanwhile Maya was just performing great on the song so there was that to keep up with and overall it was a rollercoaster ride of a song that literally felt like it was twice the length of its duration! Also weirdly enough Abel better known as The Weeknd is on this album although he doesn't stand out and or steal the song he’s featured on with his voice so that’s interesting.
Out of all 15 tracks on the LP, I hearted 14/15 and the one excluded is not the skit (when I heard "Kony 2012" I laughed so hard good memories) it was the song "Know It Ain’t Right" and like the track title says, yeah something wasn’t fully right with the song but it was still pretty decent.
My top 3 tracks out of all are: Bad Girls, Double Bubble Trouble and aTENTion with Bring The Noize getting an honourable mention because I adore the production and rapping on that track! This is an extraordinary piece of work (like me) that should get more plays and recognition as it could inspire one to be weird but fun when it comes to creating art!
AIM: My Personal Favourite
I thought I’d quickly mention the middle child between the two previous albums, being AIM, released in September 2016.
Out of these three records, I personally like this one the most not only because it’s the most “hip hop” out of three but because I feel like it the easiest pill to swallow sonically with this album still feeling like a M.I.A album, just way more mainstream and casual.
In my 2024 mini review, I wrote:
“I love the production and sampling here with it being very abstract but poppy but unique, one of my favourite tracks that caught me off guard was Bird Song with that sample being so bad that it’s good XD.
Foreign Friend had my favourite message, feature and chorus and speaking of performance, Mia was also way better vocally here with her verses being great!
Overall a really good album that gave me TLOP vibes in terms of how random it was sonically and sequentially lol.”
I still agree with all that I stated here because it was literally 4 months ago but I do highly recommend the album to you out of everything as some of my favourite M.I.A songs such as Bird Song, Freedun, Jump In, Foreign Friend, Finally, Borders and more on all present here!
The Rest...
As for the rest of Maya’s discography (which is deemed better by reviewers and her fanbase), I listen to an abundance of music and I’m always trying to find new artists while returning to old ones so I don’t know how long it will be until I visit M.I.A again.
Maybe someday I’ll review the other three records and create a part two! Who knows.
What is your favourite M.I.A song?
Which album in her discography is your favourite?
And where is your 'we'dom (what's up with that)?
-
JIXCO 2025-2026
