#393 - M.I.A. - Kala (2007)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on August 8th of 2007 on XL and Interscope Records and produced by M.I.A., Blaqstarr, Diplo, Timbaland, Morganics, and Switch, this is the second album by the British rapper, singer, producer, and activist.
She was born Mathangi Arulpragasam and nicknamed “Maya” in London, England on July 18th 1975 to Sri Lankan Tamil parents but moved to Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka when she was six months old.
During the Sri Lankan Civil War that began in 1983 and would rage until 2009 Maya’s father became a revolutionary political activist which forced her family into hiding from the Sri Lankan Army and separated them from her father for years.
Despite living in poverty she grew up learning art at Catholic schools while avoiding soldiers who would randomly shoot into the buildings.
For their safety her mother moved her and her younger brother to an abandoned house in south India where her father would sporadically visit although she was told it was her uncle to protect them all.
After the family moved back to Sri Lanka the war got worse and Maya’s school was destroyed.
Right before Maya’s eleventh birthday her family moved back to London as refugees when she was eleven years old which is where she learned English despite having terrible dyslexia.
Her father stayed and became a peace mediator between the sides until 2010 which caused a strained relationship with Maya.
Her mom became a seamstress for the Royal Family and raised Maya and her brother on a modest income despite them living in the rundown Phipps Bridge housing estate (which is basically a British version of the projects).
On top of the slum-like conditions Maya’s was one of only two Asian families in Phipps Bridge so they received rampant displays of racism.
However the late-‘80s Hip Hop music that she was exposed to there had an impact on her.
After high school Maya attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and graduated with a degree in fine art, film, and video.
While in college Maya got turned onto old school Punk and the newer Britpop and Electroclash.
She also became friends and eventual roommates with Justine Frischmann, the frontwoman of the popular Britpop band Elastica.
Justine asked Maya to design album and single covers for Elastica and then to join them on the road to video document their tour.
The opening act was Electroclash artist Peaches who showed Maya a Roland MC-505, a self-contained, digital music workstation, referred to as a groovebox.
With Peaches encouragement and Justine’s MC-505 Maya first started experimenting with music.
After a brief trip back to Sri Lanka in a failed attempt to film a documentary about her cousin who was missing in action she returned to living in the Acton area of West London.
She merged both and started using the acronym M.I.A. for “Missing in Acton.”
Justine helped M.I.A. write and record a six song demo inspired by Electroclash, Dancehall, Jungle, and World Beat.
In 2003 an independent label pressed up five hundred vinyl copies of her single, “Galang” and besides finding an underground following in clubs, on college radio, and at fashion shows the recent explosion in file sharing and social media sites like MySpace built M.I.A. an almost instant fanbase.
She was signed by XL Recordings and made her debut, “Arular”, named for her father.
Her visual style portrayed a heavy militaristic and activist vibe and her stark and jarring music described the politics, war, poverty, crime, and turmoil that she witnessed both in London and in Sri Lanka.
By 2005 she quickly became a rising critical success, going on to work with Missy Elliot, playing a bunch of festivals, and touring with LCD Soundsystem and Gwen Stefani among others.
On the wings of all that acclaim she was preparing to follow up with this second album, “Kala”, named for and influenced by her mother’s struggles.
She was unconcerned with hits and just wanted this next record to be different, difficult, confrontational, and anything but easy.
By this point she was 30, had an apartment in Brooklyn, New York and after returning to London after completing a tour of Japan she had intended to go back to the U.S. to do most of the album with popular Hip Hop producer Timbaland.
However after visa issues that profiled her as a possible terrorist due to her family’s connection to Sri Lankan guerrillas she was forced to record all over the world.
Two of the producers from her first album came back including her pre-famous recent ex-boyfriend Diplo and her main collaborator, Switch.
M.I.A. and Switch bypassed the conventional studio routine by recording anywhere they wanted using Apple’s digital audio workstation, Logic Pro on a Macbook Pro laptop with a microphone.
Months after finally getting her visa issues sorted out she returned but only ended up with one Timbaland track.
The music was more aggressive and sample-heavy than her debut and in addition to the fusion of Electroclash, Hip Hop, Punk, Dub, Dance, and World Beat music like Brazilian Funk Carioca, Caribbean Soca, African chants, and Australian didgeridoos, she added extensive influences from South Asia including samples from Bollywood and Tamil movies.
The lyrical subject matter again was very politically charged and reflected M.I.A.’s thoughts and concerns relating to the Third World as well as the street culture of Brooklyn and Baltimore.
The album was as much a World party as a protest and a call to arms.
And it was embraced with critical and commercial acclaim and success although there was also some controversy of M.I.A.’s suspected ties and support of the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan, militant, terrorist, organization.
Nonetheless it went to #18 on the Billboard Top 200 chart and #1 on the Top Electronic Albums chart while also topping it for the year.
It was in the Top 40 all over the world and her single, “Paper Planes” was a summer sleeper hit the following year.
M.I.A. was also the first Asian artist to be nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar in the same year for “Paper Planes” and her song “O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire” respectively.
While she performed at the Grammys nine months pregnant she was unable to at the Oscars because she had her son, Ikhyd three days earlier.
She went on to release three more albums after starting her own record company and she’s still a style and visual icon and a continued outspoken political activist, humanitarian, and supporter of many charities.
She has been nominated for and won a bunch of awards and accolades and in 2019 she received the Member of the Order of the British Empire for her service in music from the Royal Family.