M.I.A. is one of Britain’s more experienced artists. She knows how to
release an album and my god does she release them well. Over her three album
career, we've heard Rocky horns on "Bucky Done Gun" from Arular,
The Clash's "Straight To Hell" on the glorious hit "Paper Planes
that made Kala one of 2007s best albums, and then we heard Suicide's
"Ghost Rider". The sample of "Ghost Rider" turned a page in
the M.I.A. discography. She went from being a Bangladeshi artist to an
electronic wizard - quite literally. She was never a hip-hop artist, maybe at
heart, but her real genre focus was in electronics, when she released Maya
in 2010 we thought she finally found her feet on the ground, but we were so
wrong. Maya wasn't the electronic album "Born Free" built it
up to be. Two years on and M.I.A dropped evidence of a popular re-birth -
"Bad Girls". Its one of the best pop songs of 2012, if we're actually
calling it straight up pop music.
She dropped "Come Walk With Me" last year with a chaotic dance
video. Interscope pushed her fourth album Matangi back, forcing M.I.A. to
act on releasing snippets, "Come Walk With Me" had a short 30 second
snippet released last week. Fans of M.I.A. stood in confusion as the music was
completely different to the track she leaked out last year. I'm
completely opposite... This first insight (after "Bad Girls" last
year) in to M.I.A's fourth album is as interesting as her choice of producers.
Diplo and Rusko are no more, thankfully. Maya was flawed ever since the
day Rusko and Diplo were announced as producers. M.I.A. is making sure her
fourth album doesn’t flop by ensuring singles galore. "Come Walk With
Me" isn't your conventional pop single, though it begins with the four
basic chords that pretty much start every pop song. It progresses in to this
facade of electronic samples such as the Mac volume noise, a guy saying: "Almost
there." Avant-garde? Not at all. The beats here are reminiscent of
her Roland Arular days. Cutting up noises to make glitch-hop with
thought out vocals. "Come Walk With Me" is pop music in its
experimental stage.
~Eddie
