By: Gary L. Villeneuve

"Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs,” said Grammy-nominated experimental hip-hop artist Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam in a 2004 interview with the South Asian lifestyle publication, Nirali magazine.

Arulpragasam, 28, is better known here in the United States by her stage name, M.I.A., a name which first began appearing as a force in the American music scene with the March 2005 release of Arular on XL Records. Arular, named after M.I.A’s father, Arul Pragasam, a militant revolutionary and founding member of the 'Tamil Tiger'movement in her birthplace of Sri Lanka, was nominated for

The Mercury Music Prize in 2005 and quickly became one of the most talked about albums of that year. Praised for its eclectic integration of rhythm-based musical traditions from around the world—from dancehall, to jungle-electronica, to steel drum and even flamenco rhythms—into a singular, coherent, and accessible sound that hip-hop kids in the United States could bob their heads to, Arular effectively put M.I.A. on the Western pop-culture map.

Her newest album, Kala, released in 2007, which has been met with massive critical acclaim, picks up where Arular left off. Like its predecessor, it features an amalgamation of widely diverse musical styles and a danceable pop sensibility which has spawned three hit-singles on the Billboard charts, “Boyz,” “Jimmy,” and, “Paper Planes,” and helped to sell over 300, 000 copies of the album in the U.S. as of 2008. Oh, and did we mention that the single, “Paper Planes,” has been nominated for Record of the Year?

That’s right—one of five artists nominated for a Grammy in the category, M.I.A. officially joins the big leagues this February, competing against such notable names British rock phenomenon Coldplay (Viva La Vida), 20^th century music legends Robert Plant and Allison Krauss (Please Read the Letter), and infamous American Idol judge Simon Cowell’s Syco Records pop-prodigy, Leona Lewis (Bleeding Love). So what makes M.I.A.’s name stand apart from this prominent cast of musical players? One word: politics.

“Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing,” M.I.A continues in the interview with Nirali. While the 2007 album, Kala, is named after Arulpragasam’s mother, much of its lyrical content is much more reminiscent of her father’s legacy of guerilla militarism. In an age of hysteria surrounding terrorism and “with us or against us” socio-political mentalities, it is interesting to note how lines like this one, from the song, “Bird Flu,” lead us to wonder exactly what it is to which M.I.A.’s politics point: “Then I go on my own/Making bombs with rubber bands.” Likewise, the fifth track on Kala, “Hussel,” sees Arulpragasam drop a cryptic and seemingly violent reference to militant guerilla-style tactics, when she raps, “I got family/A friend in need/A hand to throw the gasoline/A mobile phone hooked up to the scene.”

Even the Grammy-nominated single, itself, features a chorus in which samples of shotgun blasts replace the traditional hip-hop bass drum, and verses which make intriguingly vague allusions to such delicate post-9/11 subjects as airplanes and illegal immigration. Consider, for example, the opening verse: “I fly like paper, get high like planes/If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name/If you come around here, I make 'em all day/I’ll get one done in a second if you wait.” The singer then bookends the song by flaunting this perplexing and almost threatening declaration of her own unique hip-hop credentials: “M.I.A./Third World Democracy/I got more records than the KGB/So, uh, no funny business.”

With lyrics like these, a fitting question comes to mind: what exactly is this music all about?

Pressed on the issue of the subversive political messages that appear to abound in her lyrical content, M.I.A. responds, “You can't separate the world into two parts like that, good and evil. Terrorism is a method. But America has successfully tied all these pockets of independence struggles, revolutions and extremists into one big notion of terrorism. You can't grab someone by the neck and choke them and then complain they're kicking you. If you're going around oppressing people, they will fight back..."

Hip-hop as a musical form, of course, is no stranger to violent upheavals and social unrest. The musical landscape of the 1990’s was marked, in large part, by the culmination of ‘gangsta rap,’ which began with groups like N.W.A. and the rise of artists like Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and The Notorious B.I.G. However, where the violence embodied in ‘gangsta rap’ was largely concerned with the struggles of minority groups trapped in the world of inner-city poverty, gang warfare, and drug culture, the music of M.I.A. has essentially reinvented the genre, proscribing it with thematically parallel characters and struggles, while placing it on an entirely unprecedented and exciting new ‘turf’: The Third World.

A quick tour of the guest spots on the record will attest to this fact. Afrikan Boy opens his verse on the track, “Hussel,” with the provocative line, “You think it’s tough now, come to Africa,” and even goes so far as to renounce the dominant U.S. hip-hop scene with the line, “I rep Africa, not Miami.” The song, “Mango Pickle Down River,” features a motley rap crew of Australian children who call themselves The Wilcannia Mob, and are reportedly descendents of the tribal Australian Bushmen, while “Jimmy,” a cover of the 1980’s disco song “Jimmy Aaja” sung by Parvati Khan, has been revamped on Kala with new lyrics describing an invitation M.I.A received from journalist Ben Anderson to accompany him on an African ‘genocide tour.’

So how does M.I.A. manage to get what many believe to be a notoriously apathetic group of American youth to listen? It’s all about the music. “I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing,” says Arulpragasam, “and it kind of worked.” If a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year is any indication, it most certainly did. Anyone who has heard the record can tell you just how catchy it really is. Even well-established hip-hop icon and best-selling rapper Nas has stated, as reported by Vibe Magazine in 2005, that “her sound is the future.”

Whether or not M.I.A.’s growing hip-hop credentials and newfound ‘props’ from the music establishment, itself, represent a fundamental shift in the political concepts supported by hip-hop culture, however, may depend entirely upon whether or not the kids really know what it is that they are dancing along to. In any event, should M.I.A. win the Grammy for her record, we are surely in for an entertaining and unpredictable acceptance speech.

You can tune in and see for yourself when the Grammys air live, Sunday, February 8^th at 8/7 Central on CBS.