After the single Paper Planes, taken from her sophomore record Kala, became a register-ringing soundtrack to TV shows, ads and movies, you might expect M.I.A.’s third album to be a softened-edges, spinning-money affair. But instead, as intimated by the noisy and aggressive lead single Born Free and the album’s abstruse title, she has taken the path of fellow British artists, Radiohead and followed her biggest hit with a decisively uncommercial record.
Angry and brutal from the very start, /\/\ /\ Y /\ draws on the sounds of urban London and speaks the language of global protest. The spare beats and jerky effects of dubstep – the sparse mix of dub and two-step currently booming from any credible club in the UK capital –form the record’s foundation, with one of the genre’s key players Rusko assuming production duties for five of the 12 tracks here.
M.I.A.’s immersion in the underground seems designed to alienate mainstream fans gained by Paper Planes, yet this is not quite the same as Radiohead’s deliberate lurch to the avant garde on Kid A. In fact, M.I.A. is just doing what she's always done, and what Madonna made a career out of: mining a hip seam and beating it into a shape that suits her. Though M.I.A. can hardly be charged with mainstream pandering and the paranoid wailing of opening track The Message followed by the industrial beats and nerve-shredding chainsaws of Steppin Up, is an immediate assurance that /\/\ /\ Y /\ is not made for easy listening.
M.I.A. has something else in common with Madonna – they are both savvy iconoclasts. The Born Free video caused controversy with its scenes of ginger genocide, while her lyrics continue to flirt with the language of politics, anarchy and terrorism, without ever actually saying much. “Like a Taliban trucker eating boiled up yucca”, she sings on Lovalot. Macbeth’s tale “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” lives on, though M.I.A. is no idiot.
This comparison to Madonna is not meant to suggest that M.I.A. is a mere imitator. Even the record’s poppier tracks like XXXO, retains a fierce independent streak and is deeply imprinted with the singer's personality and style. If Lady Gaga really was as edgy as a dress made of meat would have you suppose, this is the kind of music she’d make.
As it is, for those of us who like our pop music to walk that knife-edge between cheap and meaningful, M.I.A. remains a potent force. Even if the abrasive /\/\ /\ Y /\ won’t have the same kind of rotation as her previous records.
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