Music Review: Matangi

M.I.A.
Matangi
4.5/5 stars

Titled after M.I.A.’s birth name, "Matangi" sheds thrashing neon light on what has been lacking in the hard-to-name avant-garde pop sound M.I.A. and her producers helped popularize. This record’s release comes after a three-year hiatus following 2010’s "/\/\ /\ Y /\" and the "Vicki Leekx" mixtape. It has been in the works for a while (remember when the 'Bad Girls' video ruffled some anti-racist feathers on the internet?), with M.I.A. tweeting teasers and steadily releasing hits since Nov. 2011.

“I’m so tangy, people call me Matangi...Goddess of word, b****es I’mma keep it bangin’.” The opening broadcast to M.I.A.’s 'Bring the Noize,' tells us what’s up, starting with a jerky techno sample that rushes into a torrent of intricate verses. The song is a battle among bouncy electronic drums that cradle Maya’s bouncier stanzas, at least until the chorus drowns both in a detonation of skittering bass.

A combo of clappy percussion and refrain samples supports M.I.A.’s chanting of over 40 country names at random in the title track’s first sequence. The chants lead into a subdued manifesto that serves as an intro to the rest of the album and M.I.A. herself: “I’m ice cream and you’re sorbet...they got guns but it points the wrong way.”

'Y.A.L.A.' looms as a peripherally spiritual dance hit bearing two meanings (“let’s go” in Arabic, but also M.I.A.’s response to 'YOLO'—You Always Live Again). The rhythm-heavy cut seesaws between a techno-trumpet sample and an explosive bass that ignites on M.I.A.’s command (“Bombs go off when I enter the building”), and a stripped-down verse schematic leaves the heavy lifting to the capable beat. Simple doesn't mean shallow, though, since Maya trickles in anti-war and pro-mommy shout outs that are as trite as you might expect in a song like this, but her self-awareness snickers at your would-be eye roll.

'Warriors' steadily builds from an om mantra to an electronic autobiography, except M.I.A. dodges the trope of slapping mellow rap beats onto sad memories by making this cut about owning—as opposed to disavowing—her rise to success. For Maya, owning a rough past sounds like elegant narrative shortcuts (“Guess I came from the sticks and moved to the bricks”) foregrounded by a volatile percussion that falls into the cut’s machinic exit. 'Warriors' is far from a sappily triumphant dance ballad; it’s more 'this is what happened, now let’s dance about it,' and maybe a little 'turn the volume down and I’ll break you,' but always steeped in a sense of play that dilutes abrasiveness.

Julian Assange—of Wikileaks fame—helped produce 'atTENTion,' a trance break from the record’s majority of heavier cuts, by providing Maya with over 4,000 words containing “tent” for lyrical inspiration. “He doesn't get a writing credit," she told the BBC, "but he gets a thank you.” While the song itself is nothing to write home about, how’s Julian Assange for a collab?

The opening to 'Come Walk With Me' might have accompanied the end credits of a John Hughes film, but choppy electronic saxophone and drums interrupt the harmony to recapture M.I.A.’s club DNA. The cut upholds its sonic and lyrical sweetness despite a controlled leakage of hype beats, offering another sugary intermission in between an onslaught of intense dance songs.