well, i didn't hear it because i didn't watch the show but i think the mud hut thing is something she actually said herself at the mercury awards. still, it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading and is open to a lot of misinterpretation as is happening here, so i don't think it's especially advisable. i'm actually starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with all the MIA hate in general. i can't stand her but i can back it up with pretty sound reasons that are a lot more rational than "oh she's selling music for adverts, therefore is the opportunist sell-out i always knew she was" or "she's not real", no matter what people like
michaelangelo matos want to put on the internet about my opinions without emailing me or actually discussing the matter with me properly. There have been several prongs to this whole MIArgument and the responses she gets but here are the really important ones that i need to set out mys stall about once and for all.
1) people liking the songs as good pop tunes (fair enough, i suppose they are, whether her voice gets on my nerves or not).
2) her projecting herself and being taken up by many of her fans as an ambassador for global street music; that whole "homeless music" idea that she put forward. no, luv, all these musics have homes and something like dancehall can make its home wherever it lays its Kangol. if she was honest about her appropriations (and that's what they are. none of this is *her* music, just as none of it is mine. the difference between my take and hers is that i just don't have the balls or lack of respect necessary to say that my making a few mixtapes is in effect *giving* bashment, reggaeton, funk carioca or kwaito anything, when what is actually happening is me doing a lot of *taking* from these cultures) and opportunistism she still might have won me over, then it wouldn't been "dining out on other people's work" (as i put it) or seen as "a carpetbagger who was using "authenticity" as a signifier to get points from people who weren't waist-deep in the scenes whose sounds she was lifting from" (matos on me) because props would have been given and acknowledgements made.
3) the real/not real debate - this is a total red herring on both sides. it's not about realness vs authenticity, it's not about poppism vs rockism, it's about honesty vs cynicism and thought vs blind acceptance. i do not like MIA because i don't trust her, not because she's not *real*. what rupture does in his dj sets is about as (in)authentic as mia and i love it to bits, because it doesn't make loud grandstanding claims for itself - it just does what it does and lets the music talk. there's a whole lot of love and respect in what jace does and an infectious enthusiasm that connects all kinds of geographical and stylistic dots. MIA's music and MIA as a personality is too calculated and too busy telling you that it's doing something special to really be believable and, as a result, is a lot less graceful. (these are the same reasons i liked z-trip's uneasy listening mix much, much more than i liked anything that came out of the whole bastard pop/mash-up thing, incidentally - give me middle-american geeks who genuinely love motley crue over trendy europeans ironically playing dolly parton any day of the week.)
anyway, my point - unless you want the wolves circling with all manner of accusations of racism, misogyny etc i'd lay off all the mud hut business. also by being so binkered about what pop is and isn't you're laying yourselves open to an awful lot more (much more vaild) criticism, too. good music doesn't have to be wilfully avant-garde, doesn't have to be inaccessible to the masses and should only make you feel good about yourself in the sense of its effect on you, not because you know about it and no one else does - it shouldn't be a secret and being a gatekeeper is nothing to aspire to. thanks and good night.