M.I.A. (with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd)

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon. This is your host, DJ Louis XIV reminding you that next weekend on September the 11th, we will be having a gorgeous, gorgeous dance party at the Sultan room in Bushwick, we'll be celebrating three years of Chapel Rones, the Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, but also just playing all your favorite pop grilies all night long. You can tag tickets in the show notes of this episode or you can go to Gorgeous Gorgeous Party on Instagram. Can't wait to see you there. Also, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it now. Follow us on social media at poppantheonpod by our merch at poppantheonpod.com and subscribe to our Patreon channel. Pop Pantheon All Access for weekly bonus episodes of this show. Just last week Russ and I were reassessing Charlie XX's room, room at 10 and also taking a quick repeat at her recent album Music Fashion Film. So you won't want to miss that. You can also subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple Podcasts app. All right, today we're getting into an a side about one of the most beloved artists of my life, but also one of the most controversial and someone I wish I kind of didn't have to see devolve in the last few years at least public facing me, MIA. So without further ado, here is that episode. (upbeat music) There are but a few times in my life where I can remember music fundamentally changing me. Hearing jagged little pill and crazy sexy cool for the first time, seeing the Beyonce Experience World Tour, this slow recognition that instead of hating Audrey Hobert's debut album, it was actually my favorite of the decade, but one of those rare moments was my first time experiencing MIA's explosive mind-bending raucous 2005 debut album Arular, a record that somehow cuts the difference between flame throwing political activism and the list global block party imaginable. Arular, along with its follow-up, 2007's Calla, shifted what a pop album could sound like in my mind. While MIA herself, with her voice for the voiceless fuck you spirit, an utterly novel approach of blending genres and global music traditions, forever altered, at least for me, with the very notion of a pop star could be. ♪ I'm a hot dancer, I need a man for romance ♪ ♪ I'm making him hot, so there's a bitch that will romance ♪ ♪ I need a little girl, make 'cause me, dot, buggers ♪ ♪ I'm not yet fat, as long as I'll be instantly ♪ Matangi, Maya, Arul Pragasom, was born in Hanzlo an outer burrow of London on the western edge of the city. Her father, Arul, was an engineer and a writer. Her mother, Calla, was a seamstress. Shortly after Maya was born, her family moved back to their native Sri Lanka, where her father became a political activist and founding member of a Tamil militant group, the Elam Revolutionary Organization of Students. Maya's family was displaced as a result of the Sri Lankan Civil War and went into hiding from the Sri Lankan Army. She lived in India for a time with her mother before returning to England as a refugee. There she learned English and attended high school in South London before studying film and art at the venerated Central St. Martin's. As a young artist, she worked across mediums from documentary film to visual art. Her exhibition of paintings that mixed graffiti and Tamil political street art won an alternative turner prize in 2001. She also befriended Justine Freshman of the Britpop band Elastica, who invited her to document the band's tour. On the road, she was introduced to the MC505 by the band's opening act, The Electropop Artist Peaches. Back home in West London, she put together a simple setup in her apartment. The MC505, a microphone and a four track tape machine. She used it to record a demo that featured six songs, including Galang, which would become her clattering and thrilling first single. Initially pressed as a 500 copy vinyl run christened with her new moniker, MIA, the single attracted the attention of the influential British record label XL, which gave it a larger release in 2004. Galang immediately received radio play in Britain, but it also traveled quickly across the web, making her one of the first stars to use both Myspace and the burgeoning music blog scene. It cracked the UK singles chart at number 77, made it to 11 on the American dance charts and was named one of the best songs of 2004 by pitchfork Rolling Stone and Blender. (singing) While working on her debut album, MIA heard music by an up-and-coming American DJ named Diplo, and approached him one night while he was playing at a nightclub in London. The two quickly hit it off and became collaborators and eventually romantic partners, with Diplo coming on board to work on the album, which was being held up due to challenges related to its extensive use of samples. Diplo suggested that they take the vocals MIA had cut in the interim and mix them into existing hits, like the bangles walk like an Egyptian and Snoop Dogg's drop it like it's hot, then release it as a free mixed tape. This became piracy funds terrorism volume one, which ended up on multiple year end best of lists, despite never being commercially released. In spring of 2005, MIA finally released her debut album, "Ara Lar", which paired revolutionary political ideas with dance styles from around the globe. Beloved by critics, it was named one of the best albums of the 2000s by Rolling Stone, "Pitchwork" and "NME" and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. It eventually sold over 100,000 copies and was one of the top 25 best-selling dance albums of 2006 in the US. ♪ Well you want a bucket down gun ♪ ♪ Well you want that fight down gun ♪ ♪ Well you want a bucket down gun ♪ ♪ Get, get, get, get, get, get ♪ In the wake of "Ara Lar's Critical Embrace", MIA faced complications with obtaining an American visa to work on its follow-up, partially perhaps due to that record's firebrand political rhetoric. This led her to work on her sophomore album while globetrotting from India to Japan, the UK, Trinidad and Jamaica, overseen by stalwart producer and engineer Switch. 2007's Calla was preceded by three singles, Bird, Flu, Boys and Jimmy, the sonnically ambitious record, which incorporated local styles from across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean diaspora, along with Western pop, hip-hop and dance, received even more rapturous reviews than its predecessor, considered by publications from Rolling Stone to Spin and the Guardian as one of the greatest works of the 21st century. Calla also garnered unexpected commercial success when it's final single. The clash sampling paper planes became a slow-burning breakout, gaining popularity in part due to placements in the 2008 film's Pineapple Express and Slum Dog Millionaire. Paper planes slowly scaled the charts, becoming MIA's first and only top five hit on the hot 100. In addition to juicing the sales of Calla, which was eventually certified gold in both the US and the UK, paper planes moved more than five million copies globally. It has been named one of the best songs of the 2000s by VH1 Rolling Stone Complex, Enemy and Pitchwork. It was also ranked as one of Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs of all time and was nominated for Record of the Year at the Grammys. (upbeat music) Shortly after releasing Calla, MIA met and quickly became engaged to Benjamin Brompton. The son of a former Warner music group CEO and a member of one of the biggest business and banking families in America. The couple had a son together in 2007, then split three years later, resulting in a year's long custody battle that as of just a year or two ago was still ongoing. MIA's next album was 2010's Maya, an abrasive, noisy industrial record clearly meant to reestablish her outsider bonafides after the unlikely pop success of paper planes. It was her first to receive mixed reviews and also proved to be a commercial softening for MIA, moving just under 100,000 copies in total. None of the albums singles cracked the charts in the US and just won XXXO went top 40 in the UK. In 2012, Maya co-wrote a song for Madonna's album MDNA and then joined her on stage to perform it at the Super Bowl where she controversially flipped the bird at the camera, leading the NFL to sue her for damages and demand a public apology. Two years later, they settled out of court. Following ever more delays, which would come to plague almost every Maya release, she released her fourth studio album Matungi in late 2013. It topped the dance album chart but had low sales despite MIA remaining a lightning rod post-Super Bowl incident. It did, however, produce an indelible signature song. The danger produced trunk rattler, Bad Girls, which was named by pitchfork as one of the 200 best songs of the 2010s has amassed half a billion streams on Spotify and produced one of the decade's most indelible music videos. ♪ If that's guy young, that goes to it well ♪ ♪ If that's guy young, that goes to it well ♪ Three years later, MIA released what she claimed would be her final album, Aim, which moved just 6,000 copies in its first week. In 2022, she dropped Mata, which totally missed the charts. By that point, a whole new brand of controversy had subsumed the conversation about her music. MIA, who had become a born-again Christian, spoke out against vaccines and defended the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. She seemingly responded to the subsequent backlash by selling a line of clothing that included a literal tinfoil hat marketed as a way to protect the wearer from Wi-Fi. But if she was trolling, she really committed to the bit, spending years pushing clothing that claimed to block 5G. In the 2024 presidential election, meanwhile, she sparked even more outrage when she posted a tweet that seemed to support Donald Trump's bid for re-election. Earlier this year, MIA released MIA 7, an album inspired in part by the Seven Trumpets and Seven Seals referenced in the book of Revelation. That album had almost no commercial impact. This spring, MIA was booed during her opening set for Kid Cuddy for making comments about illegal immigrants. Cuddy then booted her from the tour. MIA has sold nearly 1 million records in the United States. She has one gold album, one top 10 album, one top 5 single, three platinum singles, and one gold single. MIA has received two ASCAP awards, one BET award, two Billboard Music Awards, three MTV VMA Awards, one NME Award, and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and one Academy Award. Here is me. to discuss MIA is Julien Escobado Shepard. All right, I'm here once again with Julien Escobado Shepard. - Diva, hello, good to see you. - Hi. - This is such a pleasure. I feel like we haven't done this in a while. I feel like I'm like back in the earliest days of the podcast remembering, talking about Rihanna with you for maybe like 17 hours, one long afternoon. - Hopefully 17 more is in our future. - Yeah, no, we could ring 17 hours out of MIA. - I have to say, researching this episode was like a real lesson for me in like, maybe the less you know about the people you admire, the better, if that makes sense to you, because just like quick shots here, the first two MIA albums changed my fucking life. Like when she first burst onto the scene to use the cliche, it's one of those rare moments where my entire understanding of like what pop music could be and could do change. Like I always think like what if someday, in some interview, someone asked me like, what are the five most important albums that like shaped you? Arular or Calla would 100% be on that list. Like there was just music that like created new concepts for like what pop could be, what it could achieve, how it could sound, what a pop star could be like. All kinds of stuff like that. And then unfortunately I spent a good 90 minutes watching her recent interview with our friends, John Karamonka and Joe Cosgrole on "Popcast." And I was just like, mm, like you know, sometimes someone who can be so brilliant in music can be just less so when speaking in public. - Yeah. So I have to be honest and this is a very like teach, I didn't do my homework moment, but I could not bring myself to watch that. - No, you were making a copy of it. - And I also think without watching that, we know who MIA has become as a public figure in recent times. And it was kind of seen as this radical. And I think it'll be interesting for us to like relook at some of her politics even back then 'cause her music obviously begs a political read and sometimes feels somewhat muddled maybe to say the least. But like there just seems to be, she reminds me of Kanye in the sense that there was something so exciting and something that you could really rally around behind her sort of like coming into pop music and sort of like bombing it with her, just like say anything approach or sort of like fearlessness in terms of just like being a political pop star. And then at some point it tips over into something just like red-pilled and like very, not like you're like, I can't believe I ever even like thought of aligning myself behind this person in a way. - No, it's weird. I think there's like two things. One is that like she is deep into some internet corners that no one should ever get into. And also no one should be famous, frankly. I know that that's sort of like the counterintuitive to this podcast, but like fame warps people and certain people I just think it warps more particularly if you don't have like a consistent set of people around you and also if you're already a little bit volatile. And like I think that maybe just something went really left. I also think maybe she just got really annoyed with white leftists and she's always been a little bit contrary. - And also getting annoyed with white leftists is understandable. - Yeah. - Who could blame her? - Especially when you're a brown radical. And then like, you know, I get it. I fully get it. But I also just don't think that like, I wish she had gone more just like full tanky or something. - Right, yeah, yeah. What other percent? - Instead of like Rachel Magna and like a maybe evangelical Christian. Very fascinating. - I mean the Kanye thing is apt. I mean like they truly drag. But I think it's also that thing of like, if you make your name on, well first of all, her becoming kind of like a paranoid, red-pilled person isn't so shocking because her entire person has always been like, you know, the government's lying to you. Structures are all bullshit. And that's always been, and obviously that's a very appealing thing when it's like calibrated in a certain way. But then it can very easily tip into something like, you know, 9/11 was faked or whatever. This is always kept melt. But also I think when you build your pop career around being a flame thrower, that's very easy to sort of like, you can become the voice of a generation. And then you can quickly become someone that's like just searching for more flames to throw. And I think her and Kanye, like when your whole Reson Detre becomes about finding the next controversial thing, and you've also garnered a lot of success from being edgy, from being like a bit of an edge lord, like knowing where that line falls and doesn't fall can be pretty complicated. And I think both her and Kanye like occupy that space. And it was funny 'cause in the pop cast in a room she was like, one of the more annoying things she said she was like, I've been canceled more times than Kanye is if it was like some sort of like competition to see like who's been called unquote canceled more times. But anyway, you know, it was really interesting to go back and return to the earlier music and even in light of some of this craziness because it's still so fucking fresh and it's still so exciting and she was doing something so amazing. And her early music has so evidently reverberated through so much of pop music that's come after it. And I just wonder like, what was it like for you going back this time? Does the music still excite in the same way for you? And would you think that for somebody that hadn't heard it like a younger person? Because it has metabolized so much through pop culture. Can people still hear how exciting that music was do you think? If someone was going back and listening to it now in 2020's like, yeah, I think absolutely because first of all, the stuff that's been metabolized through pop culture, I mean, like I can see a young person having her paper planes, but never having heard like XRT or whatever. And all of that music going back to it was, it's crazy because it's such a very specific moment and time as to what like music was about to do. And it was super prescient. And there's music that sounds like it wants to be it, but still like current music that isn't as exciting. And it's still doing things that people are trying to do, but aren't succeeding as like seamlessly this sort of like parapetetic like, let me throw in a little bit of it again. Don't let me throw in a little bit of like, you know, Afrobeats or whatever, like a lot of people are doing that, but it's always for the most part in the service of like this pop mainstream. She was doing it from a place of like non-commercial, none of that shit was commercial at all. And like from a place of like curiosity and genuine, not to say any other people like are not curious, but like from this genuine interest and no one else is doing it. And I think that like if you listen to those first, I would say three albums, maybe, but you have to do a succession to be honest. - Which we do. - You can really see like how and why she remains such an important musical figure and pop cultural figure and why it is so painful that she has gone to the dark side. - Yeah, absolutely. You said that absolutely brilliantly. And also I think so much about why she is that and then other people are kind of presenting sort of like service level streamlined versions of her approach that aren't as exciting or as thrilling is just because of how uniquely positioned she was as a person like her story lends itself. And I think that's what we'll be fun about today's episode is like, you know, she's such a unique character. I mean, she's this Sri Lankan, you know, child of the revolution who then spends a long time in the poor parts of London. And she's absorbing all of these different cultures in a way that like organically only she could have like spat out what came out of her. You know what I mean? Like she's the only person that could sort of be like finding the middle ground between like, you know, Indian street drumming and like the clash and like hip hop culture and like even modern pop instincts because the thing that's so interesting about her is I completely agree with you that like she never cared about wanting to be mainstream. It's very evident that that's like not driving her. In fact, sometimes I wish it drove her like a tad more at certain moments in her music, but even so, she almost like can't escape. She has an incredible intuition for rock music. Like what makes her so unique and what makes this music fly even though it is politically minded and has all these big ideas attached to it and all these ideas about like, you know, bringing together world sounds is that there's also like kind of a simplicity to it. Like I think in some ways the things that are annoying about her today, like her sort of muddled thoughts and her sort of like contradictory ideas about politics and the world, et cetera. Like actually at the peak of her music like lent itself to making pop music that could somehow both be political and fun at the same time, which is not easy to do. Like she loves the hook. She loves her repetitive phrase. Oftentimes it sounds like she's just kind of freestyle and random thoughts. She's not really putting together like a doctrine or thesis or laying out something super complicated in some ways, even as she is dealing with complex themes and issues. And I think that pop intuition is what makes this music as exciting and fun as all of the political and global impact of it in a way. - Yeah, absolutely. And I would also add though, I think one of her many contradictions is that she kind of rejected the mainstream in certain ways as far as like sonically and artistically. She really was doing her thing, but I think she kind of did want to be a pop star. Like low or high key. Like I think that that was like a sort of friction with her is that like she didn't really do what you quote unquote have to do to become a pop star. But then you know, she was pretty comfortable in that role in the times that she really was in the like sort of halo of bonafide pop roles. - Start like getting on stage with TI and Lil Wayne and Jay-Z and Kanye and nine months pregnant. - Exactly. Don't wrap her. - I'm like writing songs for Christine Aguila. - Yes, yes. But also even out shining. I mean, yes, it was like really a thing that she was like nine months pregnant on that Grammy stage, which I guess we'll talk about later, but like she outshined the biggest rap stars of that. - Easily, easily. - Easily. - And Madonna, giving the finger on the Super Bowl. It's like the most memorable part of the Queen of Bob's biggest performance of all. All that. - Yeah. - I mean, remembering some of the competition she was really like we're gonna talk about the French fry. Like I can't wait to go back to all of that stuff. Like the trouble fry, that was iconic. But yeah, I mean I just think that in a way, I think what you said is exactly right. It's like she wanted the attention clearly. She knew what she was doing was cool. She kind of had an unbeatable swagger to her that made her so appealing. And that swagger to kind of do whatever she wanted and to like draw attention to her in that way was amazing. And in some ways fate intervened in a fun way because as we know, Calla at one point was supposed to be produced with Timberland and like thank God that didn't happen. - Yeah. - But like I do think that her iconoclasm is what ultimately keeps her as one of the most exciting pop figures that we talk about in the modern canon. And also obviously the thing that ultimately could prove her downfall. I got a certain point. - No, it's so crazy because like I had not listened to her 2026 album before - MI7. - MI7, right, okay? - Her Christian album. And I'm listening to it and I'm like very reluctant 'cause I'm like I like, you know, whatever. I was raised Catholic, like you know Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Hesu's as it were. And I'm like, I don't wanna hear that shit. And then I'm like, this has bangers. - Yes. She can't help herself. - She can't help herself. - She's so good. And like yeah, she's seeing about like being your own angel or whatever the fuck, but it's so, there's like some real banger. She's so imaginative and she's so on her own tip. And like it's, you know, again, she's a fucking genius and like it's obvious and like I cannot speak enough about how much this music changed me. Like it was, like I remember where I was the first time I turned Erelar on. And I was like my entire brain scrambled. And I was like this is the coolest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. Like I was lit up inside. And like it just doesn't happen that much. It just isn't a thing that occurs that often. Like I hear music I like all the time. I worship and respect many artists, but there's only a select few moments that really had that impact on me and that was one of them. And like that is a testament to her unique genius. And I think both as a musician and as a pop figure, like she obviously was incredibly ahead of her time and set the agenda for so many things, including for our girl Rihanna in so many ways. I mean, Rihanna was on my mind over and over again as I was listening to this stuff. And in some ways I think Rihanna became one of the most like obvious mainstream vessels for some of the stuff that she was doing. I'm sure too. Am I a great chagrin? Also one of my favorite things that I uncovered in my book was when she fucking clocked Lady Gaga at the peak of her career by calling her music 20-year-old a piece of music. She was like she's not a progressive. Her music sounds like 20-year-old a piece of music iconic. So all of these really walked in her footsteps, but there really is only one. So for someone who is so steeped in their biography and to whose career her biography is so important, what are the major facets of MIA's early life and upbringing that feel like important for us to lay out before we get into her career? Yeah, okay. So it feels important that she was born. She's sort of had a herapotetic early life. She was born in London in 1975. Her parents were Sri Lankan Tommels. And then they moved back to Jaffna in Sri Lanka. And she lived there until she was 11. I think they moved to Madras in India for a time. But the main thing is that she and her mom and her siblings move away from Sri Lanka because of the Sri Lankan Civil War. So she's experiencing that. They moved to London when she's 11. So she's probably seen some shit. And obviously there's all of this Tommel to end her father who isn't really involved in her life. Even at that time as an activist for the Tamil independence movement who trained with the PLO and Lebanon who started this Tamil independence group in London. So she has this revolutionary influence in her life that's highly political when he tells the children that he's their uncle because I think he's much older than her mother. And she has this influence then they moved to London and they are living in a very, very impoverished council of state in South London where she says her family is one of two Asian families in the entire estate. It's 1986. So there's like just like, you know, thatcher poverty and like wild racism at that time. And also music that's happening is, you know, punk and the new Romantics, new wave and hip hop and her mother becomes a seamstress. I don't know what the gender neutral fucking thing for that word is, but I'm just gonna say it. - Well, let that slide, okay. - Well, let that one slide. I was like, is she a garment worker? I'm like, that is not very specific. So she becomes a seamstress for the royal family. And so there's all of this like really complex, like class, race, you know, trauma. And then she starts going to a school where they cannot pronounce her name, which is Matangi. And so she becomes. - Out of the Hindu goddess. So she becomes Maya. So there's like a lot of like kind of like chaos and all of these like dissonant influences coming into her life, which will later show up in her music and art. - Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting to think of like the collage of existence because her music is so collage like, her music sounds like what you just described in this really profound, like the connection between her life and how she's able to like refract that cinematicly through her music, like one of the clearest examples of that in pop history to me. Like I feel like if you never heard that story and you just listened to her music, you would receive that download somehow without her having to spell any of it out. Like there's such a purity of artistic expression in that way from her. Like she is a sponge of all these things. And I think like all of those contradictions as well. It's like her relationship to the West is filled with all of these contradictions. It's both a safe haven and a source of racism. Her relationship to her homeland is both like obviously like incredibly fundamental to her understanding of music, of life, of activism, of conflict, of global ideas, of you know, politics, of everything. But also is this source of like deep pain of like distance from her family of being rejected in some ways by her father of her being kind of like put to the side for her father's own revolutionary ideals, but also being completely obviously inspired by and like living them out in so many ways as an artist. So it's like all of those deep things like live within her and obviously are so informative to like what makes her music so kinetic and exciting at the same time. It's really like so fascinating. - No, it's true. She's like a true third culture kid. And I think that's really important to her later success because the way that she's able to synthesize that dissonance of being a refugee or like just an immigrant in a new place where you're the absolute minority and told as much that like she's able to synthesize that and her music in her art in ways that I think becomes really profound for a lot of her fan base that she's able to do that, which is like again, what makes her so exciting because a lot of people have similar or at least parallel experiences to her, but like when did they ever see them or do now even ever see themselves reflected? - Right, and someone that can be both a force for radicalism and sort of like putting that on front street and a simple conduit for those ideas to register with people. Because she is again, like she's bringing so much to this experience, so much to this art. And yet like it's strangely accessible in many instances at the same time, and I think that like that's where like her fascination with Western culture I find so interesting because she both kind of hates it and finds it oppressive and racist in all these ways that are you understand. And also like she's obviously completely attracted to so many of the ideals of it, whether that be punk rock music, whether that be hip hop music, whatever those things are, whether it's the clash or it's run DMC or whatever it is, like she is also clearly so forged in that as well. And that conflict is also really important. - Yeah. - The way that hip hop plays with classes, it's an interesting part of MI is identity to me. Like because hip hop can be so aspirational towards capitalistic ideals of wealth and wealth accumulation and all of these kind of things. And it's also tied to poverty and racism. And she lends us that very interestingly that in a way where she's kind of aligned with that culture, but also like sees it in this entirely other way at the same time because she's not totally part of it. - Right, she's outside of it. She's an admirer. But then she becomes part of it, which is also fascinating. - Yeah, so next big thing is that she basically goes to Central Saint Martin's college, like to become like a filmmaker basically. - Yeah. And Central Saint Martin's is like, if you don't know Central Saint Martin's, it is like the iconic art school. Basically like there's a lot of fashion designers who come out of there, like very, very, you know, the most creative like Alexander McQueen who was there. - Yeah, John Galliano, Selma Cartney. - Yeah, yeah, which is like, you know, this iconic place for like freedom and art, I think. Not just in London, but in the world. And so the fact that she ends up there somehow is like a perfect storm, I think. - Yes, and also her as a filmmaker feels really apt. Like she doesn't aspire to be a musician, but her first aspiration being as a filmmaker makes a lot of sense because she has a very like cinematic, like strong visual identity. She's also like into like Harmony Corinne and she's into Spike John, like it makes sense like who's kind of inspiring her to make films. And what's also really interesting is that the music thing is something that she sort of like stumbles into backwards basically because she basically like ends up being friends with Justine Freshman from Alaska and is making a film about her basically, right? And that's how she ends up like learning how to make music. Like what I or so is that Justine basically was like, you should try to play around with some sort of synthesis or a drum machine and that's how she essentially backsflips into being a musician. Yeah, I think it was Peaches. It was Peaches. Oh. It was a synthesizer. But she meets Peaches through Justine. And I think that she's around Justine, she does a cover for an elastic album, The Menace. Yeah. And it's interesting because you can really see her aesthetic and even though it's a photograph of lips, it's sort of like horn and it has that collage vibe. This is like while she's doing all this art in university. And then they're apparently on like a vacation or like they're filming something in Bukia, which is like in the island in the Grenadines and the Caribbean and I think that's where she meets Peaches. That's exactly right. She was colliding with Peaches and Peaches introduced her to the role in MC505 and encouraged her to make music. But it was actually Frischmann's MC505 that she started playing around with. I think Justine Frischmann introduced her to Peaches also, but who knows because this is like a very, the scene that we're talking about even though like they all seem really famous now. Like these people are all, it's very small. And so like it makes sense that they're like on vacation with Peaches and Justine Frischmann. Like picturing this is just so incredible. Like the thought of the three of them just on vacation and everyone's like, am I a like play with this machine? And she's like, no. And then she's like, yeah. And then she like makes going or something. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, that's kind of almost what happened. Right? Yeah. She starts fucking around and then she's like, oh, let me make like one of the most iconic songs of the 2000s. And all of that feels equally informative to me to who she is because there is something also incredibly, like the DIY notion of MIA feels really integral to her and also integral to the moment, right? So like we're in this moment where we're like kind of just at the beginning really. I mean, I guess hip hop production is kind of like the format we can lend to most of this where like the idea that you could just go by a piece of equipment and without any like professional music training or without a professional studio or whatever you can start to build music alone in your bedroom or whatever. I feel like that's something we take for granted now in 2026 because like any fucking kid with a laptop can make up professional sounding piece of music with no professional music training on software. Like we take that for granted now, but that was another thing in which I think MIA was like incredibly influential in terms of this idea of just like, I'm just a kid with ideas and I don't need to get any sort of like professional help to do this. I can literally just like make music by myself on a machine. And I think that's really important to understanding how she approaches and thinks about her work as well. No, absolutely. I mean, she was recording these to like four track. And like, you know, that's like the four track is obviously like through the 90s and early 2000s is like the way that you make DIY bedroom pop music or any kind of DIY music. Also she's coming from this tradition. I mean, she grew up extremely poor. And so you grow up like that and you learn to like use what you have. And I think that that also informs this like she loves the class. She loves punk rock. And I think that her art, her like visual art reflexes as well. Like you use the medium that you have to make what you need to say. So she, her art at the time is like all these, it's influenced by like graffiti that she saw growing up council estates around around South London. And also by like political street art that she saw in Sri Lanka and then suddenly mix those two and then you get a bunch of stencils of like tanks and tires. But in her art. And so like I love this idea of like she's like this long tradition of DIY plus like, you know, the like use what you have mentality. Yeah. This is also very hurt because that idea of use what you have is kind of ancient, but the way that she's rendering it is something so incredibly of her moment. Like it's only in this moment right at this time that someone like MIA can like synthesize immediately into like a radio, not quote unquote, radio ready, but like a professional ready pop star in this particular manner, like it's like lightning of right person right place in this relationship. Yeah. Right. And right place geographically, you know, I was wondering like are there any other musical influences that we should make sure that we site like you already brought up like there's definitely the politically minded punk music like the clash. I was thinking like public enemy is obviously like something that seems like really important to her like politically minded hip hop ultramagnetic MCs and then obviously peaches and elastic on all of that kind of stuff, which again, you know, we can also talk about the parallel of like or the beginning of MIA's rise and the rise of electro clash, the rise of blog house, like these kind of post genre amorphous pop music synthesized through hipster lenses, like this kind of like warping of what is popular, what is cool, what is ironic, what is straightforward, you know, all of these kind of things that the internet is beginning to scramble that she's also at the vanguard of influential on part of et cetera. But I also think like the scene of like a grime rap in the UK feels really important to me, like she's emerging at the time when grime music is also beginning to really break through like people like Dizzy Rascal and Wiley, et cetera. And then also like the culture of like dance hall and Caribbean music, also being like a huge part of London and British culture at this time, which like feels like highly influential on especially her earliest music to me. Yeah, for sure. I mean like grime is actually has like so little to do honestly with us hip hop, it's more of an growth of dance hall. And so like she's hearing like these garage crews in the late 90s and then, you know, the grime of an outgrowth. There's also like jungles really big. She's definitely hearing like pirate radio throughout London and like the thing with grime to you is that like one of my favorite little fun facts is that Dizzy Rascal made. I love you, his breakout, which came out around a little bit earlier than going. He made the beat for that on a PlayStation, yeah, because he was like a kid, right? And he was making a PlayStation and also he told me this in an interview in 2002 or some shit like that. To make that beat, he was listening to is that your chick by Missy Elliott and if you listen to I love you and is that your chick, it's like the same rhythm structure. It's crazy. You can hear it right away once you know that. So Missy Elliott's huge at this time and she's a huge influence on my eye. She loves that. She loves Timberland, which makes so much sense because Timberland is in reverse kind of like recynthesizing kind of elements from Indian music, Bangra, etcetera into contemporary hip-hop. It's like electronic, but it's also indebted to past hip-hop styles. It's pop. It has a genre of morphism that makes a lot of sense or it's rhythmically strange. I mean, Timberland and Missy made some of the most avant-garde sounding mainstream pop music that's ever existed. I mean, you can imagine a 20-year-old MIA hearing "Get Your Freak on" and having a zillion light bulbs go off in her mind. No, it's true and like, you know, Missy gets big in what, like 96, so she's like 20, 21, 22, really, that's like when your brain is really absorbing and you're able to have the agency. Like, it's all just like this wonderful, perfect storm. I also, speaking to what you said about like how she looks at and relates with and critiques and absorbs herself in US hip-hop, a fun thing is that she wrote her Central State Martins like "Beasts" on the movie "CB4." Oh my god, I was never seeing this when I was researching. Yeah, which is hilarious because what? Like, I want to read the thesis so bad. If you have not seen "CB4," it is sort of like- It's like a parody of gangster rap, basically, right? It is. It is. And it's really good. Laura Davis, who would later go on to make, like, this really good shaman shaman skia documentary, was "Franceless Shaman Shell." Like, whatever. She's, "Temory Davis" is legend. It is so funny to write your thesis on that movie. Yeah. And so perfectly heard because it's like serious and about like something stupid at the same, like it has like all of the hallmarks of her music. Like, again, there's this thing about her scrambling, high, low, clad, capitalism, anti-capitalism. Like, I mean, it's just like all of those contradictions that make her such an exciting artist and also make her such like an unsavory person, contemporarily, like, as a figure. Like, it's just all there, right, in the beginning. And like, you're right that it is absolutely so quintessential that that's what she would do. It's like, probably, right, like, a brilliant thesis about this silly documentary about gangster rap. And also just, like, really funny, but also dead fucking serious. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And it's like, she's the type of person that I feel like you could be laughing with her one second and then all of a sudden, like, you're kind of scared. Like, she could be, like, fucking. Yeah. Yeah. She's hilarious. Actually, I'm really glad that you included that little factory that also caught my attention. I was like, that is crazy. Okay. So she starts fucking around with this MC505. And in that process, she actually does end up making some of her earliest, like, versions of songs, like, "Galang," her song, "MII," she adopts the stage name at that point, which is like, obviously, stands for missing in action. And I think, like, it's kind of an opaque reference story. her sort of like landlessness, her homelessness, like her idea of just kind of being like a woman of the world, not homelessness as an unhoused, like the idea that she belongs to no specific area, which is obviously crucial to her music and to who she is as a person. And then basically through that, I guess she basically is also an early adapter of like using the internet to like get her music out there. Like how do you understand like the early part of like how her music begins to like get into the world? - So as far as I know, I'm not sure like how it really got on the peer-to-peer streaming services that were PSPs such as language and Napster. But I think that was part of it. And then also she did use MySpace in a way that like no one else was using MySpace. Like people were using MySpace. Artists were particularly like independent artists. Like we're uploading their stuff. - This is like almost like simultaneously to like Lily Allen who became kind of like the quintessential MySpace artist of that time. - Right, like it's like around 2003-ish, 2002. And for those of you who are not around at the time, MySpace at that time you could choose a track that had been uploaded to MySpace and make it like your theme track on your own page. So it was like a really, you know, this is a very beginning of like social networking, I guess. And so it was a really big deal. Like what you chose to have your fucking song be. Like get really projected like your values or whatever and along with who you had in your top 8, but anyways. So MIA takes advantage of this and puts her music on MySpace and people are like, it's both sounds crazy new and it's on this like just revolutionary social media site. And it spreads that way because it's like this confluence of like here we are brave new fucking world, new millennia, let's go. - Go live. - Yeah. And it's like, again, it's this thing of like her music is exciting and fresh and completely one of a kind amalgamation of all of the things that are happening to her and of this particular moment in music. And the way it's metabolizing is also that. Like there's just something so fascinating about. Again, it's this idea of like she was the exact savvy musician and the exact savvy music business operator to be in this exact year. It's like month year, like she couldn't have landed in the right spot more accurately. Let's pause here and talk about Galang 'cause obviously like Galang is kind of like the first really important MIA song. It even predates really like most of the rest of what comes on her debut album. And it sets the tone for everything that comes after it. What does Galang sound like? What is this song? What is it about? What does it sound like? (upbeat music) - Yeah. - It's a crazy fucking song. It's a crazy fucking song. So apparently she wrote it in Bikia, where she has that role in. And so there's definitely like a dancehall sort of Caribbean undertone vibe to it, right? And it has that like really overdriven sub-aise that's still sort of like canned, which is like also like overloading. - And overload, exactly, exactly, it's overloading. And like it sounds really, really fresh. Like dancehall at that moment was kind of like, hadn't quite like hit the like heights that it would, you know, like 2000s or whatever. Reggaeton is basically just coming into life. And so here she is with this demo, or like quasi-dembo, I guess, like, and then just kind of sassing over it. - Yes. - And it sounds so fresh and new and you're like, what the fuck? Like I just remember hearing it and being like, what the fuck is this crazy shit? - Exactly, what the fuck is this crazy shit? - Yeah, exactly. And it's like kind of about smoking weed. Like it's about like being in London, it's smoking weed and getting kind of harassed by the police. Like a lot of times her songs will be kind of story songs about characters that you can imagine. She's either been or has encountered in Sri Lanka, in India, in London, in her life. Like this character, I think, you know, she talks about kind of like, basically like being kind of like a stoner who gets caught in kind of like maybe some street battles. He's interacting with the police. Like it's freeform. It's not like so. Again, there's an impressionistic quality to it. But you know, she talks about like, feds gonna get you, pull the strings on your hood, one paranoid youth blazing through the hood. Like, you know, she's got like a, there is like a story to it, but at the same time, it's kind of nonsensical impressionistic. - Yeah, it's like an ode to like third culture road men, basically the road men, but also like, it does feel influenced by like the tropes of US hip-hop at the time of like, you know, the feds are coming for you. Like, do the feds exist in the cave? - Right, right. Oh my God, what a good point. - Right, like so it's like, she's just like, kind of fucking around, but you're right that she's a very visual writer and paints these like, portraits of people or like ideas of people. And like, this is like the first very fucking awesome example. - I mean, this song is so fucking awesome. Like to me, this is just as fucking amazing as the first time I ever heard it. And like, again, I also love that it references both of the clash, like at the beginning, she goes London call and speak to the saying, "Boy, say what, girl, say what?" And then also camera on purple haze, because it's like those feel like exact kind of like, those feel like totems of like, my entire musical ethos in this way. And what I would say about this song is like, it's so perfect as an opening salvo for her, because as it's all of these things, it's politically minded, it's class minded, it has all these things, really, it just sounds like the ultimate block party of all time. Like, it just sounds like a fucking party. Like, when she gets to that chant at the end, where she's like, "Yeah, yeah, hey," and the beat drops in. You just feel like you are watching like the most live-ass, like, rock-ass, addic-and-troll, global dance party, imaginable. It's so transportative in that way. And I feel like the her ability to walk the lines of having ideas, but also at the same time, it's pretty simplistic. Like, it's like, got nonsense words in it. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's full of repetition. It's very pop-minded at the same time. It's so perfect as a, like, starting off point for what she does. - No, absolutely. And it's like, the other thing is like, so can I give you a little story time? - Please, let's just say story. - Please, tell us stories of the past. - Here we hear it. - What was it like back then? - Okay, so this comes out. She gets signed by Excel recordings, which makes sense because she's like, kind of in that world and, like, London is a very tiny place. And also she's put this song out and, like, Excel is this perfect place that will sign her. So she has this single out. It's, like, glang and sung showers. And they're, like, on a CD single, I had the CD single, like, a promo from Excel, being, like, what the hell? This is amazing. Okay, so then her first magazine cover is The Fator in 2003. And it's a double cover of MIA and Cameron to speak to Cameron. - Oh, my God. - So I need to correct the Wikipedia record because it says that her first North American show was in Toronto in 2005. That is incorrect because I saw her first North American show on September 9th, 2004. It was The Fator release party for that magazine. And it was at some, like, weird ass warehouse in, like, the West Side, I think. And it was very dubious, like, you're going up the fly elevator, hoping that you don't die to the top of this warehouse. And she's supposed to be there playing the people in the bill are her and Cameron. Yeah, Cameron typically does not show up. He just doesn't show, which is, like, a thing that Cameron does. - Or like nine hours late. - Yeah, or like nine hours late, like, anyway. She plays, and she plays basically with a backing track and a mic, and she's on the ground, and everyone's kind of circling around her, like, fucking, like, basement show style. And then she has two dancers with her. And she does, I think, like, those two songs, and then it's done. And it kind of really sums up, like, what was going on at that time and what she was tapping into, which is that, you know, music fans were still, like, accustomed to just, like, going out and seeing, like, a new person on the floor at a weird warehouse, that also speaks to Honey York used to be. But also, she's just, like, doing it, fucking DIY style. They're dancing a little bit, and she's on the mic, and it's a backing track, and there's DJ playing the backing track, and she's just fucking jamming it out. - It's raw, it's uncut, and that's how the song sounds. Like, the song is both so epic and so banging, but it does not have, it's not polished. It sounds clattering and sort of DIY. At the same time, it's part of the kinetic thrill of it all, both her performance, the song, how she looked, I mean, her fashion is really important in this time. Like, she was such an emblematic, like, sartorially of that time period, like, the leggings, the big oversized windbreakers, like, the patterns. I mean, you're gonna describe in fashion. Like, her look was very important at this time. - It was, so she was, like, there was, like, a combination. It was a combo jam of, like, British Ray Vesthenics, where it was, like, track jackets oversized in, like, neon colors, which people associate with the lecture class, but no, I'm sorry, honey, it was, and, like, door knocker earrings, and, like, side honey tangles. - It was, like, '80s meets hip-hop culture, meets, like, Afro-prins. Like, Afro-futurism, that was part of it, too. - Yeah, well, and also, she was in the Galangu video. she was waiting. wearing shirts by Cassette Playa, aka Carrie Munden, who was like a real, you know, before street wear was street wearer. Like she was a real force in that era of street wearer and kind of bring it back. I think she also maybe went to Central St. Martin's. I'm not sure, but it was also signaling that like, MIA is not like, is singular. Like she was part, she had a crew, you know? She was like part of this movement that was like young London at that time. Like these people on the come up. So yeah, she looked mad cool. - She looked mad cool. So Gleng, it's kind of like a lot of attention. Like from people in the know, it's not like a big radio hit or anything, but it becomes like the cool person song. And I think the next big plot point here is that she comes into contact in a London nightclub called Fabric with this DJ, American DJ named Diplo, who at the time is not famous, but is obviously a very key player in MIA's personal life and professional life, moving forward. One thing that I did researching for this episode is listen to Diplo's like pre MIA music and it is unrecognizable. (upbeat music) Like her impact on him is like so seismic. Obviously he also is massively influenced by this trip he takes to Brazil, discovering like what they call by-le funk or favela music or whatever. That changes young white Floridian Diplo's life forever. - Yeah. - But his pre MIA or pre Brazil trip music is like RJD2 runoff. It's like jazzy, like chill out, kind of like electronic music. Like it has none of the like, Diplo has become for better and worse as we are on a famously called airport reggae music. You know, like, yeah, but like, that was just like one de Torre took research and I was like wow, like, you know, people talk often about like, you know, he made paper plans for her. He obviously like produced a lot of her coolest songs. He made buggy done gun whenever, but like it's very clear how influential she was on him. But they have this kind of fateful meeting at a nightclub in London around 2003 or 2004, like right when Glang is blowing up. That feels like the next kind of big, important thing. - Yeah, I mean, it is a big important thing. We should also not discount switch in this conversation. So switch the producer, he's a British-- - David Taylor, right? - David Taylor, right? Oh my god, shout out, switch. So switch is a British producer, DJ, and he also is working with MIA and Diplo. So Diplo gets all the shine, but switch. - Much more prolific producer of hers, actually. - The reality, what's interesting about MIA and Diplo is they actually don't make that many songs, even though they're so associated during this time period. It's actually switch is like one of the main collaborators of her career across most of her albums, way more than Diplo is. - Absolutely. And if you listen to Switch and Diplo would later go on to create major laser together, including Pond of Floor, which is like, obviously one of the biggest like songs like that. (upbeat music) - If you listen to like pre-switch and post-switch major laser, the dance hall shit is coming from switch big time. He's the guy who's like, tweaking the knobs in like, a crazy way, and you can hear that on MIA's music. So before Diplo meets MIA at fabric, he's straight up this like, dirtback-filly DJ producer and Florida. He's like, doing fucking mashups. But this is the time you must know when mashups are like, like genres are very, before the internet, genres are very like rigid and like segmented. And so, you know, you're like going to a Hallertronics party, which is like him with DJ LoBudget at the Mausoleum, which was a literal Mausoleum and Philly that he like, rented out as his like studio space slash dance party hall, slash apartment. And you're like, oh fuck, is that like, Juel Santana mashed up with like, oasis fuck, you know, your life has changed. But they're, it's really important at that time because they're showing people in a way, particularly on the East Coast that like, none of these fucking things matter. And they influence like a ton of other DJ crews at that time. Oh yeah, the entire notion of open format DJing when it was really exciting, like even this is like, A-track, this is Mark Gronson, like there's a whole world of DJs where it's like, what DJing was? And it's like, you see remnants of it now, but it's not the same, it's been streamlined so much. But it was like, again, just like M.A. is doing, it's like collapsing the lines between genre as you said, between high and low, like reinterpreting pop songs that people saw as cheesy and making them cool in a maybe ironic, I rollie kind of way, but also in a genuine way, like playing like, the most synthetic 80s pop song next to like, the coolest, whatever. Like it was like, like the idea that like, these things could all coexist together, it was an incredibly important part of the way DJing was functioning at this time. Yeah, for sure. And so like, they meet and he has this aesthetic and she has that aesthetic and they really mesh very well. Like this idea that there shouldn't be boundaries between music and, you know, yes, Diplo goes to Brazil and is like, oh shit, like fuck, karaoke has changed my life. By Lee Funk, he gets the Tumber South, which is the sound of by Lee Funk, which is like, juuh, juuh, juuh, juuh, juuh, that's whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, how would you describe by Lee Funk, like more generally speaking? Like what are the main hallmarks of that? I mean, it basically, people in the favelas and Rio started listening to Miami bass in the 80s. And then it's sort of like through a bunch of DJs and then a bunch of players, like quickly, it morphed into basically like that beat with rap that is very like reflecting the favela. So like, it's still even to this day sort of looked down upon by these like, you know, class divisions, whatever. So Diplo is like, what the fuck? This is the most amazing beat ever. He obviously hears this like echo, this ghost of Miami bass in there and sees the Miami bass act like, comes back in the May, they're like cut and paste collective. And then the unite. And the result of that is that Arula heard debut album is mostly finished at a certain point, but is in some sort of record label limbo for some reason. And the result of that is that MIA and Diplo together come together and create this mix tape called Piracy Funds Terrorism, which is very reflective of exactly what you were just describing in terms of their shared ethos. It's like taking MIA's music and like pairing it with other music. Like it, it's mixed together like a DJ set. And you're hearing like galang mixed with what happened to that boy by the clips. And then like, little vicious topping on for a verse. And then it's like, fire fire with murder she wrote and walk like an Egyptian. And then like, one for the head and pass that dutch. Like Amazon and Sierra's goodies. Like it's bringing together all of these different musical styles into one thing with MIA's kind of like as the organizing principle around the whole thing. And I remember it's funny going back and listening to it now because it sounds kind of crude in a way. Like it sounds kind of DIY. It sounds like, you know, it doesn't sound like particularly slick, which is part of what was cool about it. But I remember this blowing my fucking marvels. Yes, I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever heard. And it's one of those things now that I do think we take for granted. Like people are used to hearing, you know, high-low music put together. People are used to hearing mashups. People are used to hearing those who've been at the time when that came out. It was genuinely the coolest shit in this. It was the craziest thing. And also like, this is what the best parties sounded like. Like you wanted to go to this party. Yes, exactly. And they had never really been like that before. And it also, so it's crazy. It further establishes MIA's this like groundbreaking artist. And then it totally establishes Diplo as a curator in a way that like now everyone's fucking listening. And it's like a moment that like, I mean, it did. It blew everyone's marvels. And it was getting like massive, critical. It was such a unique thing that was getting like critical plot. It's like a mix tape, like a random mix tape, that they were like giving away for free at her show. As these people were so buzzing to hear her album and the album wasn't coming out. And they were just handing this thing out. They had unclear samples. They couldn't charge for it because they were literally using all of this music. You know, that was not clear. They were using all of these big songs that were not cleared. Which again, is also like a totally quintessential MIA thing to like find some sort of iconoclastic way to like get her shit out there outside of the system. You know, it was such a cool moment. Like I just remember. And then it became a trendy like Lily Allen actually herself ended up copying this and releasing mix tapes that did this kind of thing. Like yeah. And it was a way to also telegraph to the world what she was doing. Because it was also like in a way making manifest like the influences behind her work in the lack of boundaries she saw behind like what she wanted to put together in her own music. Like it was almost like a companion piece that like helped, like when you know when you read James Joyce and you also have to read a book about the book that you're reading. You need to like cover it and like what it is. Like that's how this mixing. No, exactly. Also the title Piracy Funds Terrorism is hilarious because at that time there was this profound hand ringing by record labels about piracy, music piracy. And yet they were not on the internet. They did not know what to do with the internet other than at that time like prosecuting 12 year olds for downloading shit off an app star, which they actually did and then later deeply regret it. So they're just like, haha, fuck you. We're going to release this and we're gonna make fun of you. And it was the most renegative shit and like the coolest shit that came out that year. It was the coolest shit. I mean, this is when she was just like, like I was just like you are that bitch, there is no other. Like it was just so exciting. And then eventually I guess, the success of that record is what finally got XL to release, our LAR, her debut album, which, you know, technically houses Galang, but also is like, I think to this day still one of the most exciting debut albums of all time, like it is just fucking crazy, so let's talk about this record. Maybe let's talk about Bucky Dungun first, because that's the song, like the biggest Diplo collaboration we were just talking about her and Diplo together. In some ways, like I think this is one of her most recognizable early songs, it's one of the songs that employs kind of the the by-life funk come dance hall vibe of the record, like what do you, what is this song doing to sort of build on what we were hearing on Galang, for instance? So Bucky Dungun, it is like a rallying call, it's absolutely funk karaoke influenced and it also is completely anthemic, it bleeds with horns, the horns of by-life funk at that time, and then she's screaming basically, not screaming, but she's like kind of doing a rallying call where she's like, you know, quiet down, naming London, New York, Kingston and Brazil, which is hilarious because Brazil is a country and all those other places are cities, but it really like situates her as to like her cosmopolitanism where she's London New York, Kingston on the level of London and New York, like she's coming from this perspective of like Kingston is as important as like a dance hall, you know, we're dance hall is like living. Yeah, and then Brazil, which is like introducing because I think a lot of people at that moment, like people weren't still on mass familiar with by-life funk at that time, unless she were on like Lamware, or listening exclusively to Diplo, and so then it's like, oh, Brazil, ooh, what? And then here's this funk beat and she's like just like bursting through the door, like the fucking crowd. Literally, they come into the window, they come into the door, and they bustin' down the big wall and sounding the horn. They being who knows who exactly, like there is this feeling of just sort of like breaking things, and like just generally this riotous feeling. Yeah, I know this doesn't matter like exactly what it's about, even though I think in her mind there is a very, very political element to it, like it's definitely once again kind of about like cops pursuing people, you know, there's that whole part of like, I'm armed and I'm equal more fun for the people, physical brute force, still I and you're the boss. Yeah, you're doable, grind me down, sugar salt, that kind of thing. Like she's definitely like a lot of her songs in this era do kind of revolve around like street battles between like nebulous revolutionary forces, youth culture, whatever, and like some sort of oppressive governmental force at the same time. Yeah, but also if you want to get like fucking, I don't know. My problem throughout MIA's career is that I always like read things into it that maybe aren't there. Right. So like, and that's probably good. Perfect venue for that. Exactly. Right. And this is exactly why she's so successful because you can listen to this as like a party song and like, yeah, making it like this and being like, this is about Brazil's history of slavery and like Bucky don't got like revolting against like, oh, the grind me down sugar. Oh, yeah, that's about fucking like people being enslaved to work. I'm like straight up like, yes, this is a revolutionary like a revolt song about slavery. I don't fucking know if that's what about she could have just been free associated again and a note. Well, and I think that she was like a lot of the shit sounds like nonsense. And yet it still captures the spirit of it. I think that's why it still works is like, even though like the lyrics have you tried to read into them, you're like, what kind of what are you talking about in a way. Like, it still feels like the sound of like saying fuck you like this energy of youth culture, this energy of like, we won't be kept down. It feels like it's explosive energetically in this way and feels so free. And again, I keep coming back to this world iconoclastic and how it approaches it. That's like, it doesn't matter what she's saying. It's like the energy, like even if her again, her words are muddled and free associative, like the energy she's trying to embody here is so clear and it's so palpable. Right. Right. Now, I've heard the song and now I'm going to go punch an oppressor. Yes. Yes. Why did I also love that being housed in something that's like, you know, were you so associating that with like punk and rock and this like music that can often be associated with white people, which obviously that's complicated in its own way, but it and it has this like, you know, we don't need no education or words of clash, whatever like like London calling and we're rallying, blah, blah. But there's something about that being housed in this like woman of color and these like synthetic beats and like that feels like it is taking the spirit of something like punk and giving it an entirely new vessel and an entirely modern idea, something that feels completely built on those principles and yet like you're seeing them anew completely through like a different lens in a way that is like extremely exciting when you're just to it. Yeah. It's just so great. No, absolutely. You're not used to seeing a woman of color doing this kind of thing in this kind of vessel. No, not at all. I mean, first of all, like a woman, you know, come on, like what was like the spirit of like bikini kill was like maybe one of the last times that someone got like this book like yeah, we're like Southern raw divas of hip hop, you know what I mean? And so she has all of that spirit and then, you know, I think more specifically like there were like no literally no South Asians in like, I mean, not literally like we cannot omit like Kim tile of sound garden and like Tony Connell and like corner shop and whatever. But like in this space and like in this way, there hadn't really been South Asian women who were like front women who were sort of parallel to all of these like new music millennial, like the millennium had just happened. All this new music was emerging and you know, she's a revolutionary coded and the Iraq war is raging and so she's like blasting all these boundaries and getting ready to fight. And also key, not only to cool, she's very attractive, but she's very hot, yeah, right? That's true. Unfortunately, like really helps this message disseminate because unfortunately, like that's just how it works. And also the idea that like not to be this kind of thing, but like joy as revolution, like partying as revolution is a really interesting ethos of this music to me. Like it's again, like as you were kind of pointing, it's like more than what she's saying. It's like this idea of like rockess, energy, dancing, block party, coming together, whatever is its own form of like often quite violent protests, like even the evocation of gun. I mean, this woman puts guns in nearly, I mean, she's constantly referencing them. Her most famous song, the chorus of it is just gunshots going off in the air. Like the line between a party and something kind of like a violent protest feels very thin in MIA's music to me. Yeah, absolutely. And you can think about it as like, okay, like you're like in a country that is erupting in civil war. Right. And then you go to a city that is on the cusp of like rave culture. Yeah. Right. And you come out with this to oversimplify it, but it's like that's kind of like you can see how it ends up in like all of her revolutionary songs are pretty music. Right. Yeah. Honestly, I think like sun showers in some ways is like one of the greatest representations of all these contrasts. Because it's like you've got like this song that has like an incredibly like syrupy sweet little pop chorus that sounds like it's just like kind of like a romance song. And then she's like literally saying like PLO I don't send her literally shouting out the PLO, which is also shout out to her dad, you know, and like connecting ideas of like that are explored in American rap, like the street violence of American rap, but as seen on like a global scale into all of these different cultures is a really fascinating thing that she does as well. Like, yeah, she's advanced on like linking the global struggles, you know, also like introducing us to the idea of salt and peppering our mangoes, like American white people were not on that. Not at all. I can speak. Let me speak for us. As a Mexican, I was some pepper like somebody introduced this lady to Tahini, like, you know? No, and it also like pre stages, Rihanna's famous pictures while she was pregnant going into the ocean and giving her, I think. I think in the ocean, yeah, it is funny though, because that line, as I recall, was like the pull quote for literally every story about am I like the deck would be like MIA is bringing a revolution across the world, deck, the gal who salts and peppers from mango, I'm like, yo, like there's like a billion people who do that. So what the hell? But it's a useful metaphor because it's like she's taking these kind of like syrupy pop tropes, these sweet pop tropes that kind of rope you in, and she is kind of like giving you a little bit of a spicier spin on that. Well, you think I'm talking about mangoes, actually I'm talking about like snipers or the revolutionaries, yeah, like literally like child prostitutes and yeah. - Yeah, exactly, yeah, it is useful in that way. But yeah, I think like that song in some ways like capture someone of like the juxtapositions that make this music fly. I mean, honestly, every song on this record is so cool. Like I just think like every beat is amazing. Like some of my, like, well there's the two kind of like child sex worker songs that come back to back. There's $10, which is like, you know, kind of about like a girl who uses sex work to like revenge kill her Johns basically. [MUSIC PLAYING] And like has a lot of like that sort of like fun. Like Miami-based sound to it as well. You are a QT is another like hilarious one that again, like kind of captures her ability to like come up with these like really chantey phrases. [MUSIC PLAYING] That's kind of like where her pop instinct like comes cleanist to me as like she just will find these little phrases and repeat them like in her very particular like vocal tone like where she's like do do on your mobile phone do do and it becomes this kind of like addictive thing that you want to like like a flirty chant that you want to say. And then you'll like think about it for one second. You're like, oh, she's talking about like child sex worker. Like it's like this thing of like these juxtapositions that make you feel like you're addicted to them and they're so catchy and you're just dancing to it. And then you're like, wait, what is she talking about? Like, hold on a second. Yeah. No, it's true. Like she's talking about survival sex work and then she's talking about like dictator like armies that forced children to fucking fight for them. And then she's like, blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean? It's like a fucking incredible band switch. And like the other thing is like particular at this time, which is like kind of coming up the cusp of like the backpacker era of the pop. Like people were really not trying to be edutained, right? And like she came in and like, you know what? Like you cannot resist this and also maybe you will think about these things that I'm thinking about. It was like fucking brilliant. It was brilliant. And it was so fucking exciting. I'm always just whenever I put this record on it, I'm just transported back to a very specific time in my life where I was like, wait, wait a second. Yeah. It just like pop music can be so many things. Can it, you know what I mean? I was like, I wrote in my notes. It's so funny because this album comes out like two years after Madonna's American life. And I was kind of just like, okay, like maybe this is like what American life like wished it was in a way. Like this like protest kind of like angular electronic record that like is somehow trying to like find the middle ground between like party and dance music and like saying something political. But like this album is 10 trillion times more successful at doing so than American life is. And I also another like record that's in response to like the Iraq war and like these ideas of violence and like whatever. Anyway, so Arolar becomes basically like this critical darling. It gets shortlisted for the Mercury prize. But it is by no means like some sort of commercial juggernaut. It ultimately debuts at number 98 in the UK. It debuts at number 190 in the United States. And only to this day has sold only 190,000 copies here. What? That's a bananas. But not. That's bananas. I can't believe that. It's crazy because it's so huge in my mind. Yeah, I know me too. It was like everything, but it really wasn't. And I think maybe in retrospect like after paper plans happens, like maybe people return to this. But in this moment, it was a thing of in the know people. I mean, even her singles which did better in the UK like Bucky Dunn Gunn peaked at number 88. Sun showers peaked at number 93 there. What? Yeah, Galang peaked at number 73 there. Like these were not massive hits. This was like cool kids music, which is something I want to talk about, which is like what does this album make MIA within the pop star landscape? Because this is pre paper plans. This is pre or having any real breakthrough success. And I also think this is important to position because it weren't pre the era, not to like beat a fucking dead horse into the ground as I'm doing on this podcast all the time. But we are not in the pop's middle class niche legend era of pop stardom. There is, you know, Robin hasn't broken free of a major label yet. Like there isn't this kind of like lane of like people making like just left of center pop music who become kind of cult phenomenon. Like in a way, maybe that is what Aarlar makes MIA like a very early adapter of is like she becomes the cool in the no persons pop star. Like she becomes the alternative, like a way to be in the pop music. Like if you're not into like what else is big in 2005? You're not into the pussycat dolls and you're not into a subject of our previous conversations for Galicious, like this is, you know, a way that a high-minded person can get into pop music, which is maybe also like an annoying aspect of MIA fandom in a sense at the same time. It's weird though. I mean, oh my God. You brought back pussycat dolls like, oh God. I was like working at MTV at this time and it was like a dismal time for pop music. And like I think also, you know, I don't think that at that time people would, maybe this isn't indicative actually because I don't think at that time people would have really called her a pop star, you know what I mean? Right, that's a good point. For the most part who loved music like MIA, were like fuck you, the pop machine, right? It was like pitch work or early pitch work. In a way, yeah, like it was sort of, it was really divided. And that's like all I can say. And so it was like, you know, there weren't a lot of people. And that's why Hallertronics and Diplos was so important because they were listening to like what was mainstream at that time, like, you know, like the Diplomats or whatever. And I think there was also a racial element here too, just as far as like that dividing kind of precept. But yeah, so I think as like her pop startim goes, like she was sort of the queen of like the underground, I would say, but because of her singularity as a South Asian woman, she kind of crossed, she wasn't just an in-be underground. Like as we see later, you know, she becomes this like avatar for everything that is cool. And people start listening to it across all genres. And then she obviously commands the attention of some of the world's biggest pop stars because they're like, what is this? And how can I be cool? Because the youth, you know, the effort for like pop stars rich and famous ones, and they're pursued of what the youth are into to keep them relevant is constant. And so she was what was popping at that moment. Right, I do not think it is coincidental that Rihanna's poem, The Replay, comes out the year after this comes out. Again, not that like Rihanna's the first Caribbean artist to have this level of mainstream success, but maybe in a way you can say that Rihanna is the most successful, you know, female Caribbean pop star of all time. I mean, it's not like a stretch. And like something like poem The Replay. Again, does not have the radical energy of something like glang, but it does have some of the tenants of something like glang at the same time. And obviously like it features her speaking in Pattua. It features, you know, a very like thunderous rhythmic regional sounding beat in some ways. I mean, it's much glossier, it's much more streamlined. It's produced by two white guys. I mean, so is some of MIA's music. Yeah. But like, I do think there is like a serious connection and up streaming between her and Rihanna and that timing just feels really pertinent to me. I agree. And I also do think that like because the genre distinctions are falling away on the internet, but that is also streaming to you. The mainstream still like around that time. Like we get like DeWali rhythm is like big. Yes, exactly. And people are sort of opening themselves up. Like Punjabi MC and Jay-Z does that happen if fucking Timberland doesn't like sample Bongra and like Raga's or whatever that he's sampling. And so people are opening up and then also, you know, Dancehall is like really getting fucking advanced and cool at this time. And I think particularly in a place like New York City, which is like basically what I can speak to you, is like all of these borders are exploding. And part of that is because of maybe increased immigration, maybe hot 97 is like more interested in playing this stuff. Like, I don't know, it's fascinating. And then even like some grime got played on hot 97 at that time. Absolutely. And even in the top of pop, it's like this is the moment that Shakira begins to have like big success in America in the year 2001, 2002, 2003. Like that was like a huge thing. That was like kind of an inspection. Yeah. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And the other thing that I was going to say that just feels so important and that you've been poking at this the whole conversation is that like MI is very early on this idea of like, what it means to have cool music taste is to be into everything. I think there's a very specific version of bed-sty driven hipster culture that is like emerging at this time. That is like incredibly integral to like who MI is in culture. Like where it's the very early days of optimism. I think that's also a really interesting thing to say. Like this is the idea that like, it's suddenly not lowbrow to be into pop music. And I think that that's really a fascinating undercurrent of some of MI stuff. Like hipsters being into pop music is the thing that is beginning to bubble at this time. And I think that's where something like walk like an Egyptian being on piracy fun's terrorism is like a really interesting harbinger of that concept. (upbeat music) Like a song that probably, most of like the rockest critical establishment would have seen as like a dumb stupid pop song 'cause it is kind of like a knowingly stupid pop song. Like is now being re-contextualized the coolest artists on earth and so much of blog house when I think about like blog house and electric clash. And the way that they were reinterpreting sounds from the '80s that were seen is like cheesy and stupid and making it like ironically cool. Like that feels very, very much a part of like what makes MIA so Zeke, I see in this moment. It's like this idea that like it is suddenly cool in certain like intelligentsia hipster circles who are consuming music to like love low brow shit as much as you love high brow shit or to be into something that is corny but like also political like finding political meanings like corny and all of these things like this. And she is such a vector for those particular ideas like that kind of collage of culture. - It's totally true. And also I think that there's a generational aspect as well like MIA and I are around the same age and like specifically walk like an Egyptian. I think that came out in 1986. So you know MIA in 1986 is like 11. She's just moved to London. You're 11 years old. Nobody gives a thug what the critical establishment says about walk like an Egyptian but you're 11 years old and you hear that song and you're like banger. You know? And so like all of these songs that were like cheesy 80 songs are like actually nostalgic for these people, like Diplo and MIA who grew up hearing them and they're like yeah, you know? And so that I think feeds into the optimism as well because it's like, you know, yeah, you might have hated this song, Bob, Chris Gauer, whatever I actually don't know what he thought of that song but I bet he hated it. It was written by Don was though. So maybe he liked it. But anyway, we heard it as kids and we were like, yeah, like this is a banger. (laughing) - Absolutely. A hundred percent and he goes into like listening to some of those like iconic, like super cheesy synths that you hear on like crystal castles or you hear on like a lot of other music that's gonna come out of this particular scene. Like it's just, I find that very fascinating. I think the other fascinating thing about this era of MIA that once again brings out the massive contradictions that this woman can house is that she starts dating Benjamin Bronfman, Sion of the fucking Seagrams Gin Fortune. I mean, it's just like so classic her that she like comes up and she's like, I'm a revolutionary, I'm punk rock, I'm all of these things. And then she starts dating a fucking billionaire. - I know, it's so funny. But also at that time it was very much emphasized that he was an environmental rights advocate who owned an independent record label that was dedicated to like environmental activists or whatever, but he was also the heir to the Seagrams Fortune. - Like literally couldn't be more perfect. Like that is just so funny. And I actually was listening to her like tell a story at some point when I was researching this and about how like she initially saw him and she was like, I can't date this guy. Like there's no way that I can. But then she was like, well, maybe I can. And then of course she did. And ended up having a kid with him as well, which is just like classic her. So I think some of the fun stuff that also happens around here that's like very fortuitous as I alluded to earlier is that MIA at least gets enough clout that Timberlin does want to work with her, her idol. And there is originally plans for MIA and Timberlin to work together on her second album. As I said, I'm so fucking glad that that didn't happen because this is also like the era of speaking of optimism. I think future sex love sounds which comes out in the interim between these two albums is like a big moment for optimism. That's a big moment where like the critical establishment is going like just in Timber like is cool to be into. This is cool, good music. You know, like whether we agree or not with that, I do think like that album feels like an important plot point in that domain. Yeah, for sure. And Timberlin's obviously, but like Timberlin's not in, I would say his most adventurous sonic bag at this particular moment. And I think that like I'm so glad that like MIA did not make her second album with Timberlin. And also she struggles to secure a visa to record in America. And that becomes like highly important to what becomes her second album. And obviously you're like her most important work on this earth, which is 2007's Cala. So what do you understand about the process of making this? Did I nail the major points? Are there other things we're supposed to like understand as undergirding for like how this album comes together? No, I think there are kind of the main things. And also she's sort of getting a taste of like popularity. But especially the visa thing she, you know, didn't get a visa to come into the US. She says that basically that she's like, I can't even remember like maybe to revolutionary or maybe it's like George W. Bush's like who's at the time really busy creating the agencies that would eventually become ice. And maybe it's that Bush is like, you know, it's like post 9/11 like Iraq war, Afghanistan. Like it's, you know, so she doesn't get a visa. And so she's like, fuck this. I'm just going to travel around the world to make this album, which she does. She goes to like Jamaica. She goes to Trinidad and Liberia. Does she go to Australia as well? Or is that Australia? Yeah, so you know, that sound and the lack of Timberland, which would have just been a great fucking like. And we will talk about it, but there is one song that survives from that concept of the album. And I would say it's like, perhaps the worst song on the album. Yeah, so instead she's like, fuck it, I'm just going to travel around. And so that brings us to color. Yeah, okay. So this is the greatest album of the 21st century or one of the best albums of the 21st century. And I think that like so much of that is because, okay. So to me, Aarlar is off the wall. Calla is thriller in the sense that like every idea, all of the sort of like things that are began to be explored on Aarlar get blown out to like 10,000 on this record, whether that has to do with the sort of genre of polyglotism, whether that has to do with all of the revolutionary ideas, whether that has to do with like the sheer adventurousness of this thing is truly and not to use the pun. I mean, it's a thrill, right? I mean, this album is so singular, so one of a kind, it's much more expansive, like it's doing many more things. Like it's not just like I think Aarlar ultimately is kind of a party record at its core. Yeah, this album is way bigger in scope to me without losing the kind of raw unfettered like gut punch that that music was as well. Like it still sounds shaggy. It does not sound streamlined or polished in the way that like you might think her second album does and yet it sounds much bigger, much more ambitious, much more global in than that record did. And it is fucking incredible. Like I don't know what else to say. We should talk about like some of the highlights of this record, maybe first song first. I mean, Bamboo Banger kind of like setting the tone for this thing. (upbeat music) Switch is obviously also we should say like one of the primary architects of most of this music with her. I mean huge influence I think of like Indian music on this record in a way that like is less pronounced on Aarlar and you can hear that in like these like random kind of Bollywood samples that will like loop in and out of various of these songs and you hear at the beginning of this song, but there's also like propulsive dance beats and electronic influences on this record. Like is that a good place for us to start if we talk about Bamboo Banger for a second? I mean, I love this song so much. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, so what's happening here exactly? Like what are the influences we're hearing? She's doing her kind of global roll call. Angola, Burma, Somalia, Ghana, India, Sri Lanka. You know, she is really good at throwing down on her opening album songs and this is another example of like she's kicking in the door. There's like a really sort of it's almost like the opposite of Gulleng as far as bass goes. Like it's really like enveloping and equally aggressive, but it's like it almost is a statement that this album is global because the bass is fucking front and center. And yeah, she's like kind of shouting out places she's been and like a place is that she-- The MIA diaspora. Yeah, the MIA diaspora and it like it sets the tone for like this is going to be a different sounding album. She's got more success, presumably has more money and the production values I would say are a little bit flicker but not in a way that like tamps down her sound. And she sounds frankly a bit more confident. She's grown up a little bit like there's an element of like first thought, best thought to Arular and then college just like fucking hopping in with the goddamn mind type shit. It's so, it's like the combination of like electro house, hip hop, violin, tommyle, film, scores, post punk. It's just its own entire thing in the way that the sample's kind of like jump in and out in this very kind of like collagey sort of way. Also like the propulsive energy of it as a dance song. The other thing that I was kind of highlighting is this idea of repetition that she comes back to a lot in her lyrics writing. Like this chanting kind of like she's coming back with power power four times, she says that in a row. I'm knocking on the door of your Hummer Hummer. She repeats three times in a row. I'm a road runner, she keeps repeating over and over again. It's again this feeling of like revolutionary spirit but also very like pop minded and catchy at the same time. And also complete free association. The lyric Barbara Rella looked like she my dead ringer. Like what does that mean? Like there's a nonsensicalness to it that keeps it from being like kind of overly heady or really predetermined in a way that I really appreciate and keeps it fun while also seeming kind of dangerous and politically minded at the same time. Yeah, absolutely. And also that one Barbara Rella looked like dead ringer. The fact that she's rhyming those things are like so South London and also we have to shout out her sense of syntax in writing. It's like she like might not make sense but it sounds good is that it does. Yeah, and her voice like she has a very distinctive like I was gonna ask you is am I a rapper? Like how do you think about her? And she doesn't often she will do like melodic sing songiness like in a childlike way, but she's not really a singer. But she's a rapper like what do you think about that? I think I've heard more as in the tradition of dancehall toasters. not really a rapper, although she's obviously influenced by rappers, but she's sort of more like a toaster like dance halls like jungle also like an emcee at a jungle wave like throwing down like I think of it more like that with like a little bit of singer. I think that like a lot of people in the states kind of hold her as a rapper because that is like the frame of reference. But I think much more she's like more of just like a chata as they say. Yes, I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. But it's hard to classify and that's part of what makes it so fun. Yeah. And then the song that I think like truly is like maybe her greatest achievement ever is bird flu, the second song, which is just like this co-opiness, live drumming, chickens squawking, again, to me old film samples. It's referencing like all of these like different kind of like folk music from that region. It's like totally like panicky confusion. It's wild sounding like this song is just crazy, like just one of the craziest sounding songs ever. Yeah. And actually, is this really the first song, I might be wrong, but this is really the first like big banger that she comes out and really wraps like and other songs on this album too that she really wraps like that southeastern influence. Yes. This is like Tamil folk music. And then like later on she does like this sort of like Bollywood disco on Jimmy. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy. A song about genocide. Yeah. That also sounds like it sounds like Bollywood Abba at the same time. Yeah. And it's a cover. It's a cover. Yeah, it's a cover of a number from like a Bollywood film called Disco Dance. Oh my god. Okay, well that is Jimmy Jimmy. But she changes a bunch of lyrics on it, but like in a weird way, it's like philial to the original, but yeah, it's crazy sounding song. Like this is where it's like, okay, this is a woman of the world. This is also around the time that we call at that time global base. Yeah. Started happening where like the savvy is in most interesting to me, DJs and just in general people. The promise of the internet opened up even more where like people were listening to dance music from all around the world, at least in the States, right? And so she's sort of representing this like crossroads or this intersection of like what people who are like in the underground, like dance parties in New York City and London are dancing to, which is like, you know, bilay funk, open the door. And then people are suddenly listening to like digital kumi. Right. And like, Soka. Soka and Kuduru and like all this shit. And here she is like once again synthesizing this, you know, impulse and clutch. Yeah. For like a more pop-eared audience. Absolutely. I think boys is also like one of the greatest. Yeah. It's like a Soka song. It's got like Tamil kind of influences on it. It's like wild sounding and it's so rock. It sounds like a kind of Caribbean carnival sort of song in some ways. But it's also about this vaguely about like the way men kind of, I was like, is this a bush take down at the same time? Like I don't know. Like it's like kind of. Yeah. No, it's so weird. It's like about child soldiers. Yes. Which is a big theme on this out. A lot of child soldier imagery. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I think it's, you know, she's really thinking about like Darfur and Sudan and Rwanda and like that is bleeding into this like also. She's listening to like a ton of Baltimore clubs. Yes. Exactly. Right. So yeah, then we get a song like it's so rock-ish. It's so hard to pull off songs that like are so loaded with so many influences, so many ideas and make it sound so fun and fluid and easy. And in fact, in her later music, she sometimes stumbles trying to do this. And it's so incredible how fluidly this comes together. We could talk about every single song on this record. Like there's a whole song called Mango Pickle River, which is just like indigenous Australian children rapping. All you are people with whatever speed. I meet the gang in a home of 10. One of my favorites. So good. And that was also, I mean, I actually don't know if this is how it came about, but at that time, Diplo was doing it on Australian arm of his label, Matt Decent, called Heaps Decent. And he was like trying to find people like these kids and stuff. And I kind of feel like that might have been the link, but the Wilkeneer mob is what they're called. The Wilkeneer mob. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, she often is using like cook-hoffinist children's voices in her music. It's actually at the end of Galang, too. Like all the dreams chanting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big imagery thing that she uses in her music videos. She uses it in like this idea of kind of like kids in adverse situations in countries where they're being like oppressed, whatever. Like sounds familiar. A lot of the music sounds like it was recorded live because it was like all of that cook-hoffinist drumming on bird flu was actually recorded like outside in a street, which is like part of what makes it sound so like alive and kinetic. I keep coming back to that word. But obviously the song that comes to define MIA's life career, the biggest hit of her career, is kind of stacked at the end of this album and it's called Paper Plains. Describe Paper Plains, I guess, and then tell me about whether you always like realize that this would be the song that would be the defining anthem of her career or like whether that is surprising to you. Does this song stand out from the rest of this record or from her previous work? Like what is it that makes this song the one? It's interesting because it kind of does stand out in that it's like mid tempo and like pretty melodic and it's more easy listening than some of this other stuff. Exactly and like even though it has like the gunshots of the rhythm, it's like a little bit anthemic. You can sing along and it's the vocals are very like innocent sounding even though it might be about genocide. Exactly. It's very melodic. I mean she's singing more on this song than I think nearly any song she has to this point. Yes. There's a melody going. And I also thought this time when I was listening to it, you know, it's a little snappy hip-hop beats of this era. Snap your fingers by little John or lean with it rock with it or something like that. Like it has a little bit of a conversational tone with some of the like radio rap of this moment. Yeah, that's a really good point. It does. It has that sort of tempo. And then also, you know, it samples the clash. So it's like really, you know, we're already primed. And you know, it's her kind of like it's interesting because she's going back to her roots. But when I heard it, I mean, I remember really liking it. But I wouldn't say it's my favorite song on this album. And so then when it became sort of everywhere, it was like, whoa, but you know, once JZ glums onto it, then it's like, oh shit. Well, and also what I forgot about was that it becomes popular in a way that we would recognize more frequently these days, which is that like it gets featured in both 2008's pineapple express and slum dog millionaire. And that was kind of a huge part of what blew it up, I think. Right. I had forgotten that a shout out to MIA's like sync team. She finally got a sync team. Yeah, actually, it does make sense. It just can be the one because like all MIA songs, for all the things we said about what make it accessible and it's melodic and it's in conversation and it's got this candy course. It's still like crazy. That a song that says, I got more records than the KGB and features like literal live gunshots going off was this big. It's pretty wild, I would say. It is. And like at this point, we've heard it so much like de-contactual that it's easy to forget how crazy it is that it became as famous. Some, some, some I saw my murder, some I saw my let go is the chance at the end of it. It's not given shoes in Texas. I'll put it that way. Right. Right. But yeah, I bet I don't actually know how like Jay-Z and them heard it. But like I'm sure that those movies did not hurt. No, of course. And like I and it speaks how big this song was that they all went for her and made a much worse song out of it called time because they ended up standing up performing with them at the Grammys. And as you said, stealing the show, I also think like there's a sort of come to fruition moment based on sort of like my connection between Cameron's purple haze and her reference to the clash on Glang in that this song both features the clash. So like it's like that punk rock poll. And then also features are appropriate in some way. Rex and effects is rump shaking. But you know, it's all I want to do is zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. And we'll make sure it replaces zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom with the gunshots and cash reps. Yeah. Which is just like perfection, like these ideas of like, am I just kind of standing at a sound board? I also think about like her with like an effects trigger board and just like like slamming things off and in this kind of free-styling way is like a perfect way of how I think about this song coming together. - Yeah, it's funny how inevitable it seems looking back on it and yet it still seems like fucking insane that this was such a big hit. Let me guess that your favorite song on this record was XR2. - It was up there, I would say. (upbeat music) - This is how we do an XR2. The boys say it finds that we has our pun. 2020, 2020, 12, 29, took a very good time all the time. - 'Cause it's giving like RAVE, it's giving breakbeat, it's giving free association at its peak. Like she's literally raddling off kind of 90s references basically through the whole song. - Yeah, I mean, she's talking about like the 90s London RAVE scene and like game checking all these labels that people would wear. And it's fascinating 'cause I'm like, I don't know if she was really in that. What's she? - No, she would have been like 10, 15. I guess she would have been young. - It is fascinating because I do think also at this time there was this sense of nostalgia in London for that era. But then it's also, you know, she's for the first time not on the song, but she's like collaborating with Blackstar who is a Baltimore club producer DJ. And so this is like a real, it's like a song about UK RAVE on Baltimore club beat. - Yeah, and at Baltimore club beat that also pre-sages poem to floor. - Like you can literally put on the floor coming out. - Oh yeah, and it's produced by Diplo and Swede. Who like bless you, you guys are eating off paper planes for like the rest of your lives and onto floor. But yeah, I mean, this is like around the time I think that they were kind of dreaming up major laser. And the early major laser stuff sounds like it is completely in conversation with MIA. - And I mean, not to like put to find a point on it, but it's like the XR2 to pwn the floor to girls from the world pipeline. It's like you couldn't draw the MIA influence more clearly than in that exact triptych, I would say. - Yeah, exactly. - What is your favorite song here then? - I think it would probably have to be, I think it's probably bird flu, just because it is so- - Yeah, bird flu is fucking crazy. That is her masterpiece. - It is, it is, it's so good. And I like boys a lot also. - That opening run of Bamberbanger, bird flu, boys, Jimmy, like one of a kind. Like just absolutely crazy. This album, if you do nothing from this episode listeners, just go listen to Countdown, it's so fucking crazy. It's so, so good. And the one dud is this fucking Timberland song at the end, this song come around, which like gives you a window into a timeline. I'm so glad we did not look through. (upbeat music) - I also think it's really interesting that like her video budget remains kind of cheap in this era, but also really influential. Like there's one music video that I watched for this, where I was like, Rihanna completely ripped this off for "Rude Boy." Do you know what I'm talking about? - Was it boys? - It might be, yeah it's boys. It has like all of like the people dancing in front of like the green screen and it's got all the patterns in back of it and like people are kind of moving. It's literally like a shot for shot rip off. - So we didn't talk about how like influenced, I guess because this comes later, more with Maya, but she's like really influenced by these like, sort of these glamour shots that occur in like South Asian and African diasporic communities and like in countries of origin that are like, really sort of kind of chaotic. And I think she's like referencing this like, dance hall style, a visual, but that's a good video. Everyone should watch that. - The boys video. - Yeah, it's sick, it's sick, it's sick. But what I was gonna say is that the paper planes video is like so cheap and like sort of chinsy and like she's just walking around downtown New York and like going into like a street meet truck and like is this so funny? 'Cause she's still not really like a big budget pot diva in any way. Like some of this is kind of like happenstance and obviously the success of paper planes is like, I think pretty unexpected. I don't think like anybody thought this was going to be what it became. Remembering Swagger like us though is just like such a funny cultural artifact of like, Jay-Z at his least cool. (hip hop music) ♪ Got a prop like this can't wear skinny jeans ♪ ♪ 'Cause my knots don't fit no one in the trunk ♪ - Jay-Z like pre-watch the throne, pre like kind of becoming like Beyoncé's like sweet dad husband. It's just like such a monolithic disaster of a song. Like taking the coolest pop it and turning it into like something like like a big bloated mess. Like that was just such a funny memory that I completely forgotten about. - And it's like TI, which is like a Kanye and Lil Wayne and it's this like- - And like post-peek Lil Wayne, yeah. - Post-peek Lil Wayne and it's like, you know, this is also, it was a very big deal because it was like, oh my god, the mainstream is now pulling from the underground in a way that like, and particularly like mainstream rap. - Yeah, exactly. - It was like, what the fuck is going on? And then you know, you get like a year later, though like India apocalypse where Jay-Z and Beyoncé go to a grizzly bear show, which is- - Oh my god, okay, which is like the single version of it in Western mystery history. - Which is so hilarious. - The amount of Julian, the amount of times that that incident comes up on this podcast is like, that was like literally like the moon landing of pop music history. - This is so like- - When Solange bought Jay-Z and Beyoncé took the grizzly bear concert. - 'Cause Solange was friends with Ed Rossi, okay? And then it's just like, let's go to this free show. - And Beyoncé in the collection. I mean, literally, that was- - That was like the most important event in the history of mankind. And then there were all these sightings 'cause they lived in the grudge building in Williamsburg, which is across the street from- What was the East River Bar? And they were like all these sightings of like Beyoncé's playing buck-hunter at East River Bar right now. Get here now and it's just like what? - Oh my god. - And then all of a sudden Beyoncé is like interpolating animal collective on six inch. - And Pandaflore goes to girls around the world. So we're gonna go with all the part of the same soup stone. - Okay, so Cala is like the critical sensation of the year, paper planes becomes this unexpected hit. It goes to number four on the U.S. charts. It gets nominated for record of the year at the Grammys. This is obviously like the peak of MIA's commercial success and critical embrace. This is the moment. And as we mentioned, there's the big Grammys performance where she's pregnant, which is like the only good thing that came out of Swagger like us. (upbeat music) - She's also fully deep in with Bronfin at this point. She gives birth to her son in August 2009. She composes numerous songs in 2010 on Christina Aguilar's erstwhile Bionic, including the song Elastic Love, which is just not a good song, but a wild moment. (upbeat music) - And actually like, you gotta hand it to Christina. She tried to emulate MIA in this way that is just not successful, but definitely an interesting moment of like how major pop stars were seeing MIA at this time. Like the emotion that that Swagger's in Aguilar was trying to do and failing to do was just very fascinating to me. And then in April 2010, she drops a music video and short film for when I guess is ostensibly supposed to be the lead single from her follow-up record, which is this song called Born Free. (upbeat music) And the video is directed by this guy, Romain Gavras, and is one of the most like harrowing music videos I've ever seen in my life. The song is like this kind of like, really different sound for her. It's like kind of a raw guitar stripped back minimalistic kind of punk rock song. And the video, I just rewatched it for this. Like I hadn't seen it since it came out is very upsetting. It's like about a genocide of gingers. - Yeah, it's very graphic genocide of gingers that is supposed to be, you know, I see what they're doing there. It was supposed to be like a metaphor for like, you know, kids being killed in Sri Lanka. But also, you know, it's like, would you care if it was gingers who got, you know, I see what they're doing. I don't know. - It's really upsetting. I forgot how upsetting it was. Like at the beginning, I was kind of like, okay, this is cool. I do think the song fucking rips. I think it's like one of her best songs from this album. Like it's so cool. And it's also like, it tells you so much about who she is that she would follow up the success of paper planes with this song. Like it just tells you like, as we were talking about earlier in the conversation where it's like, am I is not doing, like if MIA wanted to be a pop star enough, like she would have made a song with like Calvin Harris as her next single or whatever. But like instead she made this, you know what I mean? Like that is the epitome, I think of like the fact that like, she's never going to be the type of person that like does what it takes to become an actual pop diva even after her biggest hit. This is like a very, very edgy thing to come back with. It doesn't sound anything like anything she had even made before. - No, not at all. It is very much like, don't pigeonhole me as the paper planes girl. And also, I know that I have all of your eyes on me. Let's see what we can do. - Let's do a real sort of like, yeah, a real sort of rebellion moment. - Yeah, yeah. And also like it's important for her to I think maybe reestablish her bona fides as like an outsider artist. I feel like that's probably like feels important to her after having such a mainstream moment. - Yeah. And probably after the Christina shit also. - Yeah, I mean, the thought of them together in the studio, like release the tapes, I must see. - Were they in the studio together? - No chance in hell, but like maybe I doubt it though, but I mean like, you know, I think that there's this like, particularly at that time. There was this music industry that wanted to subsume everything that worked outside of it. And so obviously she probably got offered a gobs of money to do this and was about to have a kid. And I think at that time was breaking up with Ben Bronfen or would it shortly after, if not then? Yeah, so I feel like she's maybe feeling a bit salient by all this shit. - I think so too. - And she's like, fuck you, look at what I care about. And I can't deal with this bullshit at all. And then I think that plays itself out in obviously the Super Bowl incident and the album. - And the album. I mean, this album is clearly like a fuck you to any casual MIA fan. I mean, this album in general is definitely like, I'm not interested in, you know, the dumbasses that are into paper movies like get away from me, you know. And I think in some ways this does open up as much as I do like Born Free and I think it's a great song. It does open up a phase in MIA's career where her like combativeness, I think in some instances, like gets in the way of her like artistic transcendence. 'Cause it was a way in which she was able to balance those things before she got super famous. And then I think she got so kind of, it's almost like she got a little bit in her head about who she was supposed to be as like a revolutionary and as an artist. And in some ways, I think sometimes her music is trying to just telegraph how radical she is and how unafraid she is to try crazy shit that is both admirable. And also I think sometimes like results in unlistenable music, you know, which I would never say about any of her previous music. Before we get to talking about Maya really quickly though, we have to touch on the Lynn Hirschberg New York Times Magazine piece which comes out to promote her third album, Maya. Basically what happens is she gets profiled in New York Times Magazine by Lynn Hirschberg and like, you know, she's presenting herself as this radical outsider she's talking about, refugees and the tombles and you know, oppressed people and how she represents this kind of like, she resents extremely privileged celebrity life. Meanwhile, she's again, just on a trial with Benjamin Bronfen and she's, you know, whatever. And so she's espousing all this kind of like rhetoric about war and terrorism and anti-establishment politics and then Lynn Hirschberg basically like notes to this moment where they're eating together and Maya like takes a bite of a truffle french fry and it becomes this like huge point of controversy 'cause then Maya is like clapping back at her and being like, you ordered the french fry. - It's so crazy, the truffle fry became a moment of like, the deed was done by Mrs. Peacock in the study with a knife or something. It's like the truffle fry instead of the truffle fry. - The truffle fry gate, yeah. - It's so funny because then, so like, obviously Lynn Hirschberg, longtime celebrity profiler is doing this profile and she's looking for like, she needs a story, she needs an angle and the angle is the contradictions of like, Maya's life and the views that she espouses which like, whatever, you know, it's an interesting thing to dive into. - It's worth unpacking for sure as you've been sort of saying. - Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I don't know, was that like, the right person to do that story? Am I the editor of the New York Times magazine? No, but I don't know if like Lynn Hirschberg is exactly the person I would have had to do that. But whatever, she's a celebrity profiler. That's like her thing, she interprets everyone and she gets the goods. - So, Maya's I rate and releases audio. - She does a Kim. - She Kim Kardashian serves. - She drops the audio. And it is Lynn Hirschberg who has ordered the truffle fries and suggested them. Oh, and it is also important to note that the cost of the truffle fry order has been included in the New York Times magazine if I recall correctly. Is that right? It's like $20 or something like that. So like, I think in retrospect, not only was this like, such, I like, you know, people were arguing on the internet about this. They was like critic neck, critic neck, like all this shit. And there was so much drama in retrospect. I do think that the premise that a person can't have a truffle fry or that like a revolutionary can't have a truffle fry is, this is like a real like narrow-minded moderate position, like bread on roses baby. But anyway, it was like really chaotic. And like, it's quaint in retrospect. - It's quaint. And I guess that makes me want to ask you like, what do you think MIA's politics are really like in her music up to this point? Like it is kind of hard to characterize like, what does she stand for? She stands for globalism. She stands for like revolutionary spirit. She stands for as we talked about like, you know, the kids in war-torn regions who are being radicalized. But like her politics aren't always particularly like clear-cut even in her early work. And as you were saying, it doesn't kind of matter whether they are or not, it's more about the spirit of the thing. - Yeah. - But I think that is kind of interesting for someone who like, I think once to have the image of being a political revolutionary, but like, you know, maybe Leon Hirschberg got it this inelegantly, but she is getting at a bigger thread, which has like been born out in who MIA has become, which is that like, what does she stand for? How are you an advocate of immigrants? Like the number one voice of immigrants in pop music of the time, and then you're ultimately like MAGA and supporting Donald Trump. Like how do those two things square together exactly? I think that's kind of been there the whole time in a way. And I think that is what Lynn is noodling at with this. - No, it really has, I mean, I think really early on when she first came out, people were kind of, you know, she would talk about her father being a tumultiger. Part of like the revolutionary like, you know, armed segment of tumult independence in Sri Lanka. And like, there were scant details, right? And so there were a few people early on who were like, what does this mean? We need to fact check this. What is it, right? And now we have all the details like, maybe he wasn't like fucking shooting people, maybe he was, but like he did train in Lebanon with the PLO. He did do a lot of activism. And also like, what does it mean when the first really big South Asian, British pop star comes out and gets globally famous? And we suddenly have to fact check all of her bio, her bio details when, you know, fucking whoever the fuck, like Julian Casablanca is Mr. Downtown fucking raggamuffin, you know what I mean? It's just like, it kind of at that time, it rubbed me the wrong way. But I do think that like, you know, three albums in and like, you're writing on this, like, I don't know. I think her politics or work that she really gave a fuck. She was a refugee. She saw herself in the plight of all of these youth, as we mentioned, and really wanted to like, provide a voice and speak about what was happening and speak on what was going on. And about immigration and xenophobia in a time of deep, deep, Islamophobia, as we mentioned, these kind of global wars. Like she was, again, in her moment, it was seen for a very specific version of kind of like, western xenophobia as well. She was the voice in that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And the interesting part about that was like, she wasn't really, I mean, later on, there were a few things, I think, starting with Maya. But like, she wasn't speaking out against per se, like, these like, hegemony's that are oppressing. She was speaking from the perspective of the people who were oppressed and like, talking about like, I'm gonna fucking like, bash out the window of your car, you know? And like, it really resonated because of these like, masses of disempowered people around the world who are subject to the horrific regimes and like, hegemony's and like, et cetera, I could go on. And like, she was really, I think, wanting to represent a voice, right? Yes, agree. And should be allowed to be represented in messy multitudes. Like, it doesn't have to necessarily have a completely crystallized, clear political point of view to matter or to, like, cast out all. 'Cause also, I think she would probably hate that I said that. (laughs) She would probably be like, no, fuck you, this is my perspective, I'm an artist. Which is also valid. She's like a fucking artist. I don't know. But I think that the interesting thing is just that here is this person who's like really singular. And then she is almost made an example of. Right, being brought to task in a way that feels like, she's being made into a suspicious object. Like, exactly. That's incongruous with the way that similar, I mean, sure the strokes weren't talking about politics. (laughs) Right. (laughs) But it was wherever a pop figure in this moment. It was not a revolutionary time for pop's mainstream. Let's put it that way. It's not like the pussycat dolls were making anthems about the Iraq war. And forget the pussycat dolls. It's not like Beyonce or Rihanna or whoever, those sort of mainstream representatives, the more big tent mainstream representatives of pop at this time. Even someone like Lady Gaga, who would like a spouse, big, kind of broad ideas about equality or whatever. Like, MIA was unique in that way. And it was different. I mean, she was speaking more in a way that was, like, in conversation with the way that, like, maybe hippie error rock figures might have been speaking of politics. Like, she was more in conversation with that. And it was unique for someone with a number four US hit to be speaking in this way. No, exactly. And, like, all those statements, even, like, Rihanna going to an anti-ice rally. Yeah. Like, 28 years later. But that was way later. Like, way later. And all of Beyonce's political stances were way later. Way later. Much later than those, yeah. But, like, at that time in the US, we were kind of in a pretty oppressive society. You couldn't talk about these things in, like, 2003. And, like, I'm sure it was, like, really similar. But the underground knew what she was talking about. So, she's coming at it, at least I thought, at that time, from, like, a leftist revolutionary perspective. Yeah, it's right there. And the politics-- So we thought. Yeah. And politics at that time was freedom prize. Yes, exactly. So how does Maya the album fit into this to you? Like what do you think of this album and how does it fit into like the broader narratives that we're talking about here? Well, are you an apologist? I actually like this album. Okay, go on, tell me why. She is like, now she's like, fuck you, I'm gonna make an industrial album with Rusco. Who is one of my, I really love Rusco. He's like a great producer from the UK. This is kind of like his first kind of like a famousy thing. He became like a really big dubstep producer and now he's like, you know, he's like doing like dubstep and drum bass on like the massive EDM festival circuit. But anyway, it's like super industrial and she kind of changes her tack and she starts warning us about the internet and Google and surveillance culture. And it sounds at that time really fucking paranoid and like, oh my god. And sort of I roll. I remember being like, oh, I know like Jesus Christ. In retrospect, you're like, oh my god, she was right. The whole time. Oh my god, she was. I mean, not only was she right thematically and I hated this album when it came out. Like, that's my truth. Like when I heard this, I was like, okay, she is actively trying to make music that like everybody hates. She wants me to hate. I was like, she wants this music to be ugly and like, grotesque in this way that I'm kind of like, like a song like stepping up is like just revving drills. (upbeat music) This is forcefully ugly. It is predeterminedly just unappealing and nasty in this way. But I will say, listening to some of these songs, like particularly songs like that, that at the time I was like, fuck this. I was like, get over it. I'm sorry, it's like cat's eyes, gnarly. Kim Petters is polo. The revving drill was giving me like Billie Eilish's burio friend. I was like, she was on it. It's impossible to listen to a song like gnarly and not hear stepping up as like 15 years out of its time. - No, absolutely, it was. I'm trying to find, I'm pretty sure I reviewed that album very positively and people were like bitch, you welding. But I was right. - Yeah, I mean, I still don't love it, but I do appreciate it more than I did. I mean, it's like a very, very, very big fuck you to anybody that was like trying to casually be into MIA in any sort of way. I mean, it's so abrasive, basically, across the entire thing. But again, that song Meds and Feds, which she made with Derek Miller from Sleevels, is very like a hundred gecks, Codip. ♪ It's like the rules that make realists ♪ ♪ Like we break in man, breaking like computers ♪ ♪ Like I'm my empire, no more fighting with this ♪ ♪ We try that out, schoolin', so we jump on us with this ♪ ♪ I fear understood this ♪ There's so much on here that like definitely was out of its time, like she fucking, she knew what she was doing in a weird way, or maybe she didn't, but she still was out of her time. And then there's the one pop song, XXX. (upbeat music) Which is like very Rihanna-esque and it's one of her most straightforward pop songs in all time, that's a response to fame, which the whole hook is like you want me to be somebody who I'm really not. - Yes, which is also the worst song. - Yeah, the worst. The worst song and also it is like you're tweeting me like Tweety Bird on your iPhone. - No, no. - No. - What songs like speak to the like, what you love about this album? - I mean, I've really like Born Free. - Born Free so good. - I like it is what it is if I recall. I like stepping up. I mean, part of this is like, you know, the Rusco songs to me really speak to just my adoration of Rusco. But I just, I like the industrial vibe of it. I just like that she's like become very famous and popular and then just goes the other way. - Oh God, did she go the other way? - It feels, yeah, the rebellion is really awesome. - I agree. I admire what she did here more than I enjoy listening to sound, but I definitely liked it a lot more now in retrospect than I did in the moment. In the moment, I was like, get over yourself girl. I was like, come on, but I did really appreciate it. And I did, it's her only top 10 album in the US because obviously I think this was the moment that most people were interested in her. It sold 100,000 copies here, but it definitely like kind of, I think put a huge stop on like whatever sort of like commercial ascendance paper playing had. Ignite. - Yeah, yeah. - Like I think that was, there was definitely a pivotal moment. The next thing that feels so important as you hinted at earlier is in 2012, the Queen of Pop herself puts MIA on the lead single for her classic album MDNA. (upbeat music) 2012's MDNA, how could we ever forget? - I can love that. - And MIA famously gives the middle finger to the entire Super Bowl halftime show audience. (upbeat music) - Thus stealing Madonna's thunder and going down in history, most controversial moments since the tit came out. - Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, Madonna's hit. - Yes, Madonna's hit. - Which is really funny to me because Madonna's like, I'm like, girl, all you ever did was do stuff like this your whole career. - It's because she got up stage. - Right, yeah. - It's not because she actually did something offensive. It's because she's usually the one that would be giving you a finger or pulling her jet out or whatever. - Exactly. And then, you know, the fucking FTC is on MIA's back, the NFL, their fighting. There's a documentary about MIA that's quite good. And there's some footage from backstage after that. And it's like a real like, hands shit. And, you know, I think-- - Did they show Madonna and she interacting? - I don't remember if they showed Madonna. I feel like it was in my recollection. I should have watched this, but I do recall her being backstage and being like, what? Like, I'm in trouble. - Well, she said in the pop cast interview that she like literally didn't think about it before. Which like, I don't know if I buy, but it was like a dance. 'Cause she loves pushing other, give me a break. But she said it was more just like the energy of the, 'cause the lyric I think is I don't give a fuck. Like, I think the lyric that she did it on is I don't give a fuck. - Right, which makes sense. - It makes sense. And the fact that we were so scandalized is just like, I mean, look who's the president of the United States now? I'm like, do you think we would be scandalized by this now in the same way that we were in 2012? Or whoever was? I don't remember being scandalized personally. - Yeah, I think people were scandalized or said they were scandalized because it was like, oh my God, you know, super bowl. Like, but now they have bigger things to worry about. - Yeah, and also our country is just like the most vulgar, like our entire political language and everything is just so vulgar and discussing how would you ever criticize someone for doing this. But it was such a big fucking deal. It was so crazy and like put her at the center of controversy in a way that she both like loves and is pushing against, I mean, I don't know. It was just an interesting, 'cause I feel like it's like one of her biggest mainstream moments. But I think like at the same time, it continues to kind of like push her away from the mainstream and it represents the push and pull that she feels within her to both like be on a Madonna song in the first place. Which is like speaks to your point earlier about like, okay, she does want this to some degree. Obviously, you're not gonna make, give me all your love in with Madonna unless you do kind of want this. And then also kind of hating it and like kicking it in the balls at the same time. - Yeah, it's like really a friction within her. Can I also just point out that Nicki Minaj was also like a song. - I was gonna say it's like Madonna and her two mega backup dancers. - Right. Is there something about Madonna that like drives women of color having from the leftist cause? - Yeah, well cause Madonna's like ultimate resistance mommy at this point, like in her lab. Like she's giving very like pussy hat energy. Then you've got MIA who like is probably going right for like genuinely, like not that I'm like comparing women's right word swings, but like I respect MIAs more than Nicki Minaj's is that crazy to say. - Yeah. - Well, I think MIA is just like going down her own wormhole. - She's doing her own research as they say. - Yeah, exactly. I think Nicki Minaj is just doing it for potentially much more specific reasons, such as hearted. - Yeah, such as hearted. - Allegedly, allegedly. - Okay, so her response album to this and the last major thing I really want to touch on here is she releases Matangi in 2013 and is pressaged by kind of her last big pop cultural moment in my estimation, which is the song "Bad Girl." ♪ That's die young, that goes to it well ♪ ♪ That's die young, that goes to it well ♪ ♪ That's die young, that goes to it well ♪ - Which she makes with Timberlake Aculate Danger, who is most famous for producing blackout and like some of like the coolest mainstream pop songs of that particular moment. Apparently this song actually dates back to the Calisessions originally. - Fucking banger. - One of her sleekest, definitely like most mainstream sounding songs, but like wow, this song is so good. - And it's also by far her biggest hit besides paperplanes on Spotify. I think paperplanes has a billion streams and this has 500,000 and the next one has like 25 million or something like that. - This song is so good. - Just so epic, like the big kind of like rattling, kind of like it's got dance hall influences, it's got kind of like Bollywood influences. It's so, so, so good. It's a little bit sinister. And then it has this incredible video that Roman makes as well with like the cars tipping to the side and like the women in her jobs. It's just like such an amazing, it's like, am I his last moment of true cultural transcendence in my mind? - Yeah, it's so good. And then once again, you know, it's got like these really fucking awesome women in Morocco like car drifting, and they're wearing Nika bin hijab. And it's one of those things where it's like, is she making a statement on like Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving? Or does she just think it looks cool? - Like looks cool. - Is it just visual? - You will know. - It's so true, yeah. - No, it's so true. It's so true. And I think this song like in some ways, and bodies that in a very particular way, because it's also her most commercially driven song. Like it's one of her most, like, outside of XXO or whatever, it's like one of her most, like, commercially driven, like, if this was the eventuality of her obsession with Timberland, like I'm glad we got this one song, even though he's not involved with it technically, he's only there as dangerous. And yet at the same time, like, yeah, as you're saying, like, is this song about something? Is it not? Are any of MIA songs really about anything or are they not? Is the chant live fast? Die young, bad girls do it well, like, what does it mean? And yet the attitude, the sort of, like, insusions, the, it feels so good to chant and sing it in the car in the club, like, the energy, the spirit still is there for sure. Exactly. And it's one of those things, too, where, like, now I have to say, fuck MIA's sync manager, because I really hate, like, it flipped it in such a negative way, because it's, like, such a great, like, kind of, anthemic, aggressive song, and then you're like, oh, now I'm seeing this in, like, you know, an Amy Schumer trailer for, like, a comedy or whatever. And it's so frustrating, because, like, can we not have one thing? At the same time, though, you have to understand why. I mean, and she probably did, too. Again, getting back to this controversy, like, you don't make that hook and, like, not expect those things. And also, this beat is irresistible. It's so fucking delicious. Like, I just, I'm like, all right, well, if what she was previously making was stepping up, and then she's making this, it's like, you're getting at that tension that lives within her again, where it's like, she wasn't just gonna make stepping up for the rest of her career, obviously. Like, she had some desire to do this. So, whatever, if this is MIA making pop music, I wish she would do more of it, if I'm being honest, 'cause this song is so fucking good. This album had some good songs on it, too. Like, I think "Bring The Noise" is pretty good. ♪ Bring the noise when we're in a pond land ♪ ♪ Bring the noise when we're in a pond land ♪ You said there was a moment with Yala. There was a moment with Yala, which was good. But also, it's like, okay, at this point though, she's not on the zeitgeist anymore, Julian. I'm sorry, you can't make a song called Yala. Like, many years after Yolo, and it's like, she found a little bit like. ♪ And yeah, yeah, no ♪ ♪ She's gone, oh ♪ ♪ She's gone, yeah, yeah, no ♪ ♪ She's gone, oh, when it ends to the building ♪ It just all felt a little bit like, you know, for someone that was totally the basis of her whole career was being ahead of the curb, I was a little bit like. There's a bit of an eye roll, am I wrong? I mean, I love Yala, but yeah. And it's like, you know, Matangi is like, kind of her reflecting on the Hindu goddess after which she's named, and it's kind of reflecting on spirituality. I actually think it's kind of low-key, maybe one of my favorite albums at first. - It's solid. - Attention. I love that song, produced by Swift. ♪ And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ But I will also say that, so I have interviewed MIA a few times, I think, and apparently in 2012, or maybe it was 2011, it was around the time before Matangi, when she was talking about Julian Assange and all this stuff. - That was big, 'cause there was like the whole Vicky Leaks mix tape we didn't talk about as well. - Vicky Leaks, right. - So then she's talking about Julian Assange. She's talking about Vicky Leaks. And then here I am interviewing her about her limited edition label collaboration with Bexbeer. I guess it was her spend. She did a piece of art for a Bexbeer bottle about which I interviewed her. And I'm like, this is like the crux of her contradictions. She's like, everything's surveillance, Vicky Leaks, Julian Assange, and then the spirituality moment with Matangi. And she's doing a fucking Bexbeer label collaboration. - And she signed to Rock Nation at this point, never forget. - Yes, yes. - Yeah, it couldn't be more perfect. But again, I guess maybe the muddled message is the point. I think the thing for me is that at a certain point, it starts to feel like she's doing a caricature of MIA music or something like that. In impressed with her, she said, "My references are beyond the music industry. I'm talking about the goddess Matangi who invented music 5,000 years ago." And I'm like, "Okay, it's just like, your music used to be radical without her needing to like, I don't know, like sort of hammer the point home in this way." And I think there starts to be like a little bit of like a joylessness that seeps in. Because the thing about like something like R.R. and even Calla is that like, in spite of all the ideas and da-da-da-da, there was always like so much fun and energy and like, you could sense her joy in making it. And at a certain point, there's like a self-seriousness that sets in that I find kind of unappealing, I think. Yeah, it's weird. It's so weird. I think it's just like, this is why people shouldn't get famous. Yes, that's what I think. Yeah, agree. And also like, be asked to like, define themselves against or, I don't know, like all the friction of the whole thing. Plus, she's gone through some like break-ups. Yes, right, and she's like, "Road, weary, like who knows." Yeah, according to her, she's been canceled more times than Kanye at this point. It's true. Are there moments in her post-Metangi discography that jump out to you that feel worth mentioning? I think the only like major one that I thought about was the song "Borders" from her 2016 album, you know, "Borders, what's up with that?" Obviously. Yeah. What's up with that? What's up with that? What's up with that? What's up with that? Borders, what's up with that? I mean, I totally agree. I do agree. I do agree. I'm always saying that. Borders? What's up with that? What's up with that? That's like a parody of an MIA song. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, that's like, yeah. It is, and it's really frustrating because I totally agree with her. Borders aren't real, but then she got in trouble for the video, which was like she was trying to make a point, I think, about like what was deemed in Europe the refugee craziness, but the point was lost. The point was lost because of the song being terrible. Yeah, exactly. Are there any other moments on AIM or 2022's "Mata" or you were talking about "Wisening MI7"? Does there anything that jumped out to you or is this when you started to kind of like disconnect from her journey? I fully, after Metanga, I kind of like disconnected. The music was, she had a single off of, I think, "Mata," which was the one. And that was, the one was the one where I was just like, I can't, and this is not working for me anymore. But I did listen to MI7, and I actually think it's good. It's like in spite of itself. It's like trying everything to annoy you, and then it's, yeah, it's good. Like, she's got like Kanye's "Colaboratives" the Sunday service choir. She's talking about Jesus, and I'm like, "But also, there's some really good songs on here." She can't help herself. She can't help herself if you can gird yourself for the lyrical content. It's kind of a thing. Right. It's like, is this how like the die hard YA fans who like are like, "Donda, too is good. Is this how they feel?" You know what I mean? I don't know. No. No, no, no. No. Are ourselves with those people? No. But I also think it's interesting that she is writing an album about the book of Revelation, which is like the craziest book of the Bible. Right. I'll think you're word for it. I have to say. I've yet to pick that one up. Just a little TLDR about Revelation. It's the one with the four horsemen, and like the fucking 666 team, and like it's a very graphic and kind of terrifying. Honestly, that tracks for her. And I will say, not to be superficial in that, but she still looks amazing. I have to say, she's aged incredibly well. She's fucking stunner. Yeah, man. So, okay, that's MIA. What do you think is MIA's legacy at this point? Like, let's talk about it in two ways. How do you think she's viewed my mainstream culture, and then how do you think like anyone that understands her knows music and pop history thinks about her and her influence? I don't think mainstream culture really thinks about her other than when paper plans comes up, or bad girls when they come up in like movie trailers, honestly. She's like a one hit wonder to me. I think so. I do think for like music nerds such as ourselves, like I think she is one of the most groundbreaking pop artists. She's certainly like you said, top five groundbreaking pop artists of the 21st century so far. And she ushered in a lot of things that we now take for granted, such as like internet virality for musicians, such as, you know, genrelessness, the idea that you don't have to just listen to like music that is part of your fucking like culture or, you know, American white hegemony or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think she's like so vastly important. And again, I think that's why it's so weird. But also, it kind of makes sense to see her like go this like born-again Christian background. Yeah. It's almost inevitable in this way. Yeah. It kind of is. I just feel like I see her everywhere in pop music and pop culture, like everywhere from like Rosalia's moto mommy to, so as I mentioned so much of Beyonce and Rihanna's music to Narlie, to Katzai, to Kim Patrice, to Charlie XCX. I mean, I was thinking of a song like Bingo on Arula with the revving engines. It's in the sounds of cars proposing forward and I was like, do you get room room without MIA? Do you get PC music without MIA? Do you get hyperpop without MIA? Do you get 100 gigs without MIA? Not at all. Like, it's truly her impact is massive and it also must be profoundly frustrating for someone like her to feel under song in that way. And yet, I think she's done as much to damage her own legacy as anybody has done. You know, I wonder how we would be talking about MIA if she wasn't now thought of it. if she has thought of as kind of just like a red-pilled conspiracy theorist, I mean, I don't know. Like it certainly isn't helping things. Yeah, I think that I do think that like in certain ways she would still be kind of more of the grandum of like this type of music, if she hadn't gone in her weird direction. I mean, that's the thing. I don't think she has ever wanted what we think she wants. No, I don't know if she's ever known exactly what she wanted. I mean, if the one thing that we come out of this conversation is I think it's like the muddled message is the point. It's not really an issue. In her best music, it didn't matter because it was kind of the point of the whole thing was just kind of like one single woman with a truly unique life story. Yeah. Set of influences just refracting her experience out at the world and it wasn't about having some sort of unified message. That wasn't the point of it. The wild, crazy amalgam of the whole thing was what made it amazing. And then it's also what makes her kind of an abrasive character in the contemporary landscape. No, it's true. I think it's like that is partly why is she so hard to pin down because she seems to be speaking for others and experiences that are outside of her own and her own and yet she doesn't want to be anyone but herself. And I think that that is like what trips people up sometimes. Yeah, and it's tough because she often posited herself as like, I'm the voice of these people and like so many of these early songs like pull up the people we didn't even talk about that. So I'm like, you know, she's explicitly being like, I am your voice. I am your avatar. And then she's like, no, I'm not. Yeah, yeah. But therein lies the contradictions that make this career so fascinating and so fun. Okay, so final question. I don't think it's a particularly interesting one because I think it's a pretty obvious answer. But pot pantheon ranking for MIA. I mean, she's kind of a totemic niche legend, right? I mean, she's essentially like, there's no other place. She is like, she is foundational to the concept of being a niche legend. It seems like to me. Yeah, no, absolutely hyper critically respected, massively influential, only moments of commercial success, but like a long tail of like, cultish feverish obsession from people in the, yeah, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, it's not a huge debate, I would say. Yeah, no. Thank God, though, because we had a lot to talk about and we, that was more important than this discussion. So anyway, Julian, nobody I like doing this with more than you, it was so good. Thank you so much for being here. And I'll see you for our next seven hour burn down. Whatever we're going to be talking about that. Yeah. Thank you so much. And also I did just want to shout out Brenda Jakota, who is writing a book about MIA at the moment that I'm very fucking excited for who knows when, but it's a really good writer about many things that I can't wait for that. All right, shout out to her for sure. We'll look out for that. And thank you again, Julian. Yeah. Thanks. All right. So there you have it. Pop Pinty on MIA, a certified niche legend. The judgment is rendered. I want to say, thank you so much to the fabulous Julian Escamato Shepherd for being such a great guest. Thank you so much to Laura Taylor for her help editing this episode. Alex Lobo for her help with the artwork. And of course, Russ Martin for everything he does to make this show happen every single week. Don't forget to come to Gorgeous Gorgeous on September 11th. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Follow us on social media by our merch at poppantheonpod.com and subscribe to our Patreon. Poppantheon.all access for weekly bonus episodes. And we will be seeing you next week. Bye bye.