M.I.A. is a dirty dirty sellout. Never mind that she is ostensibly retired from performing, there is absolutely no reason to listen to her again, and her albums should be stricken from the historical record.

Alas, that is not possible. Many people, perhaps one or two of the readers of this blog, have listened to and professed to liking her albums. And now, thanks to Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, she’s a pop sensation. So, you, with your superior musical knowledge, will inevitably be asked if you have listened to M.I.A. This will put you in a very tricky situation. You can’t say no, lest you lose yor well-deserved feeling of superiority. But if you simply say yes, you will admit that you listen to something the masses listen to, and that just isn’t possible. You’re better than them! Your response must reflect that. So, here is a guide that hopefully will allow you to deftly answer this question.

First, you must display a wry smile. A small, quick chuckle would also be appropriate. “Yeah, I listen to Ms. Arulpragasam,” you start, with a weary tone to your voice. Make sure you don’t confuse M.I.A.’s given surname with that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahminedjad. Nor do you actually say “M.I.A.” Quickly, you correct yourself. “Or, I used to.”

Your counterpart will surely have a quizzical look on his or her face. So, you’ll elaborate, “Her first album, Arular, was incredible. It was so real. It dealt with living in a state of extreme poverty and constant war. Her dad was in the Tamil Tigers, you know (you don’t know. I didn’t until I googled it just now. And I’m still not sure. Just go with it.). She’s much more of a gangsta rapper than someone like fuckin’ (insert contemporary gangsta rapper). Arular combined punk and electropop and Britpop and…” Now your voice will trail off. Shake your head and mutter, “it was unreal.”

Here’s where things get tricky. Her second album, Kala, wasn’t any worse (or so I’m told. I never actually listened to either album. Not really my style. But I digress). But “Paper Planes” was on the album. So say something like, “And Kala was great too. But they fucking (pronounce the g) censored it. ‘Paper Planes,’ you know, the song from the commercial, had these gunshots in them. Of course, the shithead suits didn’t like that. And now it’s in that fuckin’ commercial.” As you can tell, the level of profanity will rise exponentially as you get away from actually talking about the music.

At this point, you should have a diatribe prepared about how capitalism is ruining art. Something like, “She was explaining the awful conditions in Sri Lanka. And now she’s being used to shill stoner movies. Movies made by men who don’t care about the poor, and if they ever saw someone like Ms. Arulpragasam before she became famous, they would just walk right by them, not even stopping for a second. What a disgrace.” (You can also go into how great Freaks and Geeks was here also).

By now, the other member of the conversation, if he or she is still around, will regret even asking the question. You will have retained your elitist status, even if you, like me, haven’t listened to it. And if you have (which you probably should, people seemed to really like it), you can talk about how it made you feel or how you couldn’t stop singing it or something like that. There is only one way to end the conversation, however:

“Santogold is so much better anyway.”

1 Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment