‘Pop dissident is back’
NAMED after a ghetto Hindu goddess, M.I.A.’s fourth proper album pops with a relentless pounce and is filled with all the paradoxical imagery that the intro’s title “Karmageddon” conjures.
On the call-to-arms title track she breaks it down as a tsunami of percussion mounts: “It’s so simple/Get to the floor.” Then sets it off simply by rhyming different places — “Gambia/Namibia/Bali/Mali/Chile/Malawi” — in her inimitable cadence.
But it’s never simple with M.I.A. because in her words she’s “Got a reputation/People see me as trouble.” She plays vocal acrobat on “Bring The Noize,” tabbing herself the “female Slick Rick” and unleashing spitfire bars like “Do you like my perfumes?/I made it at home with some gasoline and shrooms.” Her playful side rhymes “giddy up” with “light the city up” and boards Boeings eating bananas. On “atTENTion” she flips the syllable “tent” 50 different ways. (AP)
