The year is 2005; you can turn on the radio to hear Panic! At The Disco blasting 24/7, the Billboard rap charts are overflowing with 50 Cent and Kanye West, and in the background of it all, prolific producer M.I.A. releases her first solo album.
M.I.A. burst onto the scene with a collaborative project with Diplo in 2004, which she decided to give half of her songs from “Arular” to. It ended up causing her another year of work, but it built hype worth more than anything else. Her production was innovative and bouncy, something you could dance to with the beat alone. It was coming in at a perfect time with hip-hop production moving forward at an unforeseen rate.
All beats go deeper than they appear, though M.I.A. has some of the best samples of all time. She could create a beat from anything and proved it by pulling from snippets like the theme song from “Sanford and Son,” a British television show from 1973. Another fan favorite is “Me so h*rny” from the movie “Full Metal Jacket.” She doesn’t just find her samples from cinema and TV though; she knows her deep cuts in hip-hop. A group with a total of one hundred seventy-three thousand monthly listeners and their 1983 “Holiday Rap” was used on this. M.I.A. knows no bounds with her music knowledge.
My favorite aspect of her music is her use of different drums, most originating from completely different continents, created by a Roland MC-505 drum kit. It sounds like every single song is produced differently, which is also thanks to collaborator Diplo. Both of their careers have shot up in different directions. Diplo has reached nearly 34 million monthly listeners on Spotify, while M.I.A. is at 9.3 million.
The results of this album have had an everlasting imprint on modern music. M.I.A. can be seen as a blueprint for large amounts of modern club music. Tracks like “Bucky Done Gun” and “10 Dollar” sound like they could’ve been made months ago rather than years. This album doesn’t only last with time; it keeps getting better. It’s unbelievable someone with equipment from the early 2000s could make beats as complex as hers.
M.I.A. will forever contend as one of the most prolific producers and rappers of the 2000s. She understood what most couldn’t, how to break the typical beat whilst making it feel familiar to the time. She broke the system with her debut album and deserves the flowers that go her way.
