M.I.A. Mata Review: A Buoyant Balancing Act Between the Political and Personal

The rapper-singer continues to triangulate sociopolitical commentary and personal identity in consistently clever ways.

M.I.A., Mata
Photo: Island Records

“I can’t please everyone,” taunts M.I.A. on “Beep,” a clattering, crowd-pleasing track from her uncommonly buoyant sixth studio album, Mata. Over on Twitter, the rapper-singer has resorted to old habits—namely, pissing people off with odious comparisons between conspiracy-monger Alex Jones and celebrities promoting Covid-19 vaccination.

On the one hand, we all achingly need to stop looking for, or at least expecting, moral and ethical leadership from pop culture figures (another lyric from “Beep” issues M.I.A.’s reminder of the same: “I’m not a politician and not U.N.”). On the other, M.I.A. has made doing this difficult, as her persona always been fiercely informed by her subversive, often radical politics.

And then there’s the matter of M.I.A.’s music itself, which—since the release of her most divisive album to date, 2010’s Maya, effectively chased away fair-weather fans—has been mostly devoid of any friction, and usually all the better for it. Thankfully, Mata continues this trend, because much like 2016’s AIM, the album supplies both a steady stream of spartan, world music-infused beats and a procession of relentlessly catchy hooks and inventive melodies.

Advertisement

The first few songs of Mata’s 33-minute set lean heavier on their unique production than they do on M.I.A.’s pop instincts. Sonic colossus “F.I.A.S.O.M. Pt. 1” (“Freedom Is a State of Mind”) gives “Born Free” a run for its money in terms of out-of-the-gate intensity, while “F.I.A.S.O.M. Pt. 2” calls back to the more collage-like detail of 2005’s Arular, and even musters a vocal house-adjacent charge thanks to the ferocious, belted hook from Tamil-Swiss singer Priya Ragu.

Capping off this early streak is “100% Sustainable,” a maverick stylistic exercise on the order of some of Maya’s most interesting tracks, but with that album’s divisive noise aesthetic traded for a disarming, holistic minimalism. Over nothing but reverb-drenched hand percussion and a field recording of Tamil choir singers, M.I.A. whispers a kind of braggadocio-imbued beat poetry that resonates with endearing amateur energy, until snatches of lyrics clue us into the more specifically gendered (“Sex is your scholarship”) and sociopolitical (“100% organic…no pestibeats”—as in “pesticides”) ambitions of the music.

YouTube video

Starting with the moombahton-influenced “Beep,” Mata burns bright with one pop banger after another: the glistening, vaguely Christian EDM of lead single “The One,” the gleefully sardonic self-worship of the reggaeton “Popular,” and the Tamil soundtrack-sampling bhangra of “Energy Freq.” There’s just the right balance here between new musical directions and a certain earned familiarity, from the rhythmic similarity between “Energy Freq” and Kala’s “Bird Flu,” to the way the looped, guitar sample from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’s “Maps” on “K.T.P. (Keep the Peace)” feels like a callback to M.I.A.’s classic flip of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell” on “Paper Planes.”

The last few M.I.A. albums all carved out some space for at least one or two marquee features, but Mata is almost entirely propelled by the strength of M.I.A.’s vocal dexterity and ingenuity, and her arsenal of earworm-worthy flows. (“Tribe,” featuring the late JuiceWRLD, was cut from Mata’s tracklist at the last minute, but you can and should seek it out on YouTube). The only credited feature this time comes on “Puththi,” M.I.A.’s collaboration with another Sri Lankan refugee, Navz-47. “It’s a Thamilan party!” coos M.I.A. on her verse, putting aside her latter-day tendency to build songs around a kind of cultural messiah-like persona (oftentimes tongue-in-cheek, to be fair), and rediscovering a bit of the communal fun of her early music.

Advertisement

For an artist who’s weathered as many controversies as M.I.A. has, none of it speaks to the merits of her music. Mata is an album of exhilarating musical riches, triangulating sociopolitical commentary and personal identity in clever ways. Its songs offer savvy new articulations of the M.I.A. autobiography, collate various crises facing the world today into zen-like mantras, and advocate for a radical thinking that starts with a genuine sense of empathy.

Score: 
 Label: Island  Release Date: October 14, 2022  Buy: Amazon

Sam C. Mac

Sam C. Mac is the former editor in chief of In Review Online.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.