M.I.A. - Kala (Review)

1fastdog.

Posted to Music on Sun Sep 09, 2007 at 01:51:02 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

What we have here is quite possibly the most over-hyped and over-rated album of 2007. The critics are falling all over themselves to heap praise upon the newest joint from M.I.A., but how good is it, really?

Well, the answer lies somewhere in the nether regions of your brain that process your response to stimuli. If you're not familiar with M.I.A.'s music, it can best be described as world-beat hip-hop as "sung" through the pipes of a Sri Lankan-born but London-based rapper. Her first album, '05s Arular came critically acclaimed - and deservedly so, as it was as unique listening experience. Indefinable yet familiar, extremely catchy, but not in the typical verse/chorus style that so many of us are used to hearing. It managed to be overtly political, yet it wasn't alienating at all. In short, it was a cool album that overcame any juxtapositioning of duality.
The new album fails to conquer the same dichotomies that the earlier album transcended. Kala can best be described as a glorious mess of global proportions. It tries so hard to cross world beat boundaries with modern hip-hop sensibilities that it ultimately fails to connect despite its swinging-for-the-fences mentality.
This album - while having many faults - should be lauded for its attempts at sonic audaciousness. Everything is thrown at the wall here; a re-imagining of a track from a Bollywood movie, crazy beats, global instrumentation,  guest rappers, ultra-repetitive lyrics that burn themselves into your brain whether you want them to or not. The strange thing, and perhaps the most damning thing, is that this album ultimately lacks any kind of sustainable energy. Sure, you get a caffeine kick from a couple of tracks, but they end up leaving the leftovers to seem unappetizing and flat. The album's opening track, "Bamboo Banga," could've been a great track, but at nearly five minutes long the track takes almost two minutes to get going and what little energy and fluidity there is causes the listener to become fatigued before the track starts to take off - a pattern that follows in varying guises several more times throughout the album.
It should be noted that the guest rapper spots on the album are all atrocious. The  best of the worst happens to be Afrikan Boy on "Hussel" who is merely bad, as opposed to the horrible, horrible spots by Timbaland on "Come Around" (he's so fucking cheesy on this cut he should start pimping for Velveeta) and the Wilcannia Mob on "Mango Pickle Down River" (a collective of Aboriginee tykes recruited to lend their lyrical skills, and I'm using "skills" in its most tenuous, nebulous form here).
Fortunately the highlights of brilliant songs like "Paper Planes," "Bird Flu," and "Boyz" compensate for their counterpart's craptasticalness, a feat which is echoed throughout the album. For every song that ends up in a crashing flame-out, there seems to be another one that just fuckin' kills!
Tracklist and final thoughts to follow:

1. Bamboo Banga     
 2. Birdflu    
 3. Boyz    
 4. Jimmy    
 5. Hussel    
 6. Mango Pickle Down River
 7. 20 Dollar    
 8. World Town    
 9. The Turn    
 10. XR2    
 11. Paper Planes    
 12. Come Around

In the end we have a scattershot listening experience in which a few really, really bad songs are counterbalanced by a few really, really brilliant ones with everything else strongly in the sonically interesting, but relatively unessential category. This disc lacks easy hooks, relying on repetition to grab your ears, and while it can and does attach itself to your aural appendages, it can be a bit tiring. A good album for the hard core fans and those strongly interested in sonic experimentalism via global beat hopping, but a Caveat Emptor for everyone else. This is the most over-rated album of 2007, although "Paper Planes" could well be the best track I've heard this year. 6 ½ out of 10.