Give or take the album, love the debate
I have to say, I'm loving the whole debate around this record - it's like one of those thorny little problems in science that reveals whole worlds of information when its solved.
To me the record is nice, but not stunning, but still a long way off being execrable. And I know exactly what Woebot and Blissblogger and Luka mean in terms of how you can look at it as "wrong" and "cringeworthy". And I thoroughly concur that while it has a lot of appeal and excitement in today's context, it is unlikely to still sound fresh in 5 or 10 years time.
MIA is appropriating and harnessing street music to her own agenda. She does "get it wrong" on many parts of the album, and a lot of it does seem 'fake'. And the whole package can add up to seem very aesthetically unappealling, particularly if you're someone who has immersed themselves in underground music for a long time, and who likes discrete scenes, as applies to nearly everyone on this board.
But why does it seem so wrong to us? Why do US rappers get a free pass to be "studio gangstas" and still be acceptable? Why can Brazilians appropriate, and get hilariously wrong, the hip hop sound and have us all raving about it? Why is it okay for Riko and Flo Dan to rap in patois when they don't speak that way, but not for MIA? Why is Public Enemy's clunky and dangerous political posturing better than MIA's?
Ultimately why is it that the only people we don't want to see do these things are those who are tainted with the dread middle-class tag or the worse art-school one?
I mean granted, art-school students are fucking annoying, but a decent proportion of them do go on to create things of value, certainly a higher percentage than, say, actuaries.
Underground scenes are great, and music that comes out of them does have these 'higher frequencies' that still resonate years after the event and that you can still hear in acid house records today, almost 20 years after the fact, and after its descendents took over the musical world. But things never stay underground, and if something is good, people will notice it and exploit it, that's the way of the world. Hip hop, dancehall and "shanty house" are long overdue general middle-class acceptance, and MIA is simply the frontrunner. It's no different to what happened with rock and electronic music. We've just got to accept it.
Personally I reckon it's exciting, because something like this signals a sea change, there are going to be all sorts of new eddies and wrinkles springing up in music as a result, and that's usually a good thing. Sure, MIA might have all sorts of dreadful, worthy descendents in the years to come, but we'll also probably see new iterations on all the things she's ripping off as a result of this.
And, yeah, galang is still pretty catchy.