M.I.A.
AIM (Deluxe Edition)

M.I.A. – Aim (Deluxe Edition). Interscope/Universal. 2016.

Alternative Rap, Alternative Dance, Electronic Pop/Rock, with a decided emphasis on the Pop Music side. Indeed, the fifth work of Maya Arulpragasam, British of Tamil origin, born in 1977, emphasizes Pop appeal, surprising or disappointing those who appreciated her at the beginning rather than in the recent past.

Arular, from 2005, offered an experimental and indigenous language, between Grime (Garage Rap) and Electroclash, a minimal sound, with pounding loops.

Kala, from 2007, much more eclectic, opened to the most disparate and exotic ethnic elements, incorporating captivating samples, from the Clash (“Stright to Hell” in “Paper Planes”) to the New Order (“Blue Monday” in “10 Dollars”).

Those were the two masterpieces of the grayest, sooty, and dirtiest area of anglophone Hip Hop, under the aegis of producer Switch.

Then came Maya, from 2010, more inclined toward contamination with Techno, Electro-Industrial, Dubstep, and Trance, and Matangi, from 2013, a sort of Hindu missal increasingly compromised with Pop.

Announced, then, back in 2005, as “The Next Big Thing,” today with “Aim,” aiming to retrace the pinnacles of that lush past, M.I.A. actually has little to share with those torrid and harsh beats she once prolonged.

Her mestizo Electro Hip Hop dangerously approximates Rihanna; in a parabola that seems inexorably pointed downward, at least in creativity and flair. In and of itself, there's no intrinsic harm in offering more catchy melodies or less tortuous, thundering, and menacing grooves.

Collaborations with Madonna and Timbaland must not have had excessively adverse effects, nor significantly undermined her way of presenting herself as a third-world star, a freak, an alternative, nonconformist, and sullen singer. Surely, if musically she softens (a little because of motherhood, a little because of her Los Angeles residency), she doesn't retreat much from her usual political motives (notwithstanding the not entirely convincing distancing from the separatist—and “terrorist”—organization of the Tamil Tigers or LTTE, counterpart in the Sri Lankan Civil War, 1983-2009, with 100,000 dead). The themes Arulpragasam prefers to address are war, migrations, racism. She also assigns a role to images (the video clip for “Born Free,” truly violent, was censored and banned from TV, while in the recent “Borders,” inspired by Syrian refugees, she appears in a Paris Saint Germain shirt, but instead of “Fly Emirates,” prominently displaying the inscription “Fly Pirates,” promptly leading to legal entanglements initiated by the company). In any case, it is always in music that she best expresses herself.

Speaking of a more linear and less articulated production, entrusted to the duo Skrillex and Diplo, this CD also includes tracks that are only sketched or of modest prominence. Some have speculated the necessity to fulfill contractual obligations, in light of the announced retirement from the scene, or at least from the more conventional distribution channels. It seems strange to me, with the ability to record music under her own name, that she wouldn't nonetheless seek to offer her best to her audience. A more plausible explanation is that the artist had already provided her best. This Rap “musician,” a lover and epigone of Public Enemy, and presumably a passionate follower, in attitude, of Public Image Ltd., is experiencing a phase of low inspiration, simultaneously seeking to broaden her audience. Thus, the album in question, which overall still barely reaches adequacy (6.5/7), also offers points of interest worthy of entering a potential “Greatest Hits,” alongside various “Paper Planes,” “Bamboo Banga,” “Pull Up The People,” “Born Free,” “Bucky Done Gun,” etc., where, however, the fundamental ingredient was experimentation; the exercise of a knotty and abrasive electronica, of syncopated, disjointed, and indigestible beats, of ethnic and industrial samples, in a suggestive play of precarious balances. A daring experimentation, now absent.

So, what episodes are worth saving in “AIM”? The aforementioned “Borders,” with its caressing melody and swaying rhythm, suitable for Twerk dancing (with hip thrusts in a squatting position). The singing is less stuttered than usual; Arulpragasam has a voice that is not particularly gifted, but scratchy and incisive. And here she proves to be also alluring.

There's also “Freedun,” truly pleasant, a more than honest vaguely Arabesque Hip Hop. The refrain hosts Zayn Malik, from One Direction (and here the skilled reviewer Abraham should be consulted); Zayn sings “All The Stars Are Shining Bright, But You’re The Only One I See.” His voice is sufficiently filtered to make his appearance more comedic than grotesque. Then there are the two eccentric versions of “Bird Song” and three self-quotations, self-indulgent: “Bamboo Banga” in “Visa,” “Bad Girl” in “Foreign Friends,” and “Paper Planes” in “Finally.” The latter could easily fit into Rihanna's current repertoire.

Affinity with Pop and Dance, however, doesn't make M.I.A. that marketable. Better the distorted, Pindaric flights of the past, okay. But she hasn't sold out to mainstream, or perhaps, she hasn't succeeded. Less capable of hosting in her sound & loops (not sound & vision) things that are poles apart (see the nature/artifice dichotomy, that between East and West, the opposition between the north and south of the world, or between Sinhalese and Tamils, or between Buddhists and Hindus), she declares, nonetheless, that she still has the desire and impetus to break down distances between cultures and barriers between musical genres. Her “art” aims to be this. “Not the product of black culture, not the product of white culture.” Will she manage it again?

Perhaps not. One cannot step into the same river twice. Perhaps yes. Because one can ascend even by virtue of a descending force.