Label : XL Recordings
M.I.A. is hard to miss these days as she tours North America’s stadiums with Gwen Stefani. But, her rising profile can be attributed as much to her tenacious ‘guerrilla-style’ as to her electro-clash vibe. Electro-clash appears to be influenced as much by the sounds of old school video games as it is by house beats and dancehall grooves. Arular, the debut release by M.I.A. is a battle ground where synthesized bleeps and drones compete with her goading chants. In a way, the sonic chaos echoes the turmoil she’s had to pass through in her life. Maya Arul was a child of Sri Lanka’s civil war and fled the country with her mother and siblings to start a new life in the housing projects of West London. The challenge of trying to fit into this rough neighborhood combined with the violence she experienced growing up echoes in both her visual art and her polemic raps. Her circumstances have also given her the resolve to take the music industry head on. She adopted the dancehall riddims and Caribbean patois she heard on the streets of West London and created one of the most talked about debuts in recent memory. M.I.A. is proud of the fact that she quickly absorbs the sounds she hears around her. She confesses, “People say I’m a musical blotting paper and I like that. I’m a living, breathing mix tape.”