M.I.A. was always bad, a poseur who adopted the costume of third world revolutionary politics as a gimmick for her music career then married a ultra-rich heir. If you were unable to identify this in her heyday that's ok but that says more about you than it does about her.
It was only a few years later that I actually heard the Clash song that was sampled for 'paper planes', and it was definitely an 'oh, wow' moment.
When she had Diplo on board, she sometimes did some good stuff, but most of 'Kaya' was basically unlistenable.
I don't think I ever listened to one of her albums all the way through, honestly. Her "revolutionary" stage persona rubbed me the wrong way in the same way dudes I went to college with who carted around that big doorstopper Che Guevara biography did.
I genuinely doubt most of them read the whole thing. But in the late 90s that thing had a certain amount of totemic significance with a type of on-campus dude: they'd tote it around even when it wasn't assigned reading, or make sure it was clearly visible on their shelves, coffee table etc.
I mean, I bought that book, but I read it the once and then it hung around my bookshelves for a few years waiting to be donated or given away. It's gone now.
Is Che still a totem to the insouciant pseudo-leftist?
She also produced on that tape, and it used vocals recorded for Arular which had already been completed before they started the mixtape. This all gets entirely erased by Diplo’s white Svengali narrative
Diplo’s primary career function for years was just make money by making non-white artists (MIA, Gucci, Paper Route Gangstaz, all the uncredited artists on his baile funk tapes) palatable to white hipster audiences
