As someone who’s had a similar war-filled, refugee living upbringing I relate to MIA SOOO much! We’re literally the kids that could see through all the social BS but were outcasted or called conspiracy theorist for insights. Now everyone is coming back to us going “you were right!”
I also feel like a theme in XXXO is a commentary to the general public - how this album is a transition period from her being more obscure to part of America’s mainstream with paper planes, but with all that mainstream attention comes expectations on what she should be in terms of a popstar. But she’s like no, idgaf, imma be sleepy on this sleazy beat on purpose
totally! i didn’t really talk about the transition from kala/paper planes to this album but yeah this song is definitely a response to what she’s “supposed to do” with all the success that song gave her
this album came to me in such a strange period of my life. i was in music production school and really struggling with loneliness and internet addiction. the sounds and lyrics hit me hard at the time and made me reconsider what a song could be. ended up experimenting a lot more with my production and my professors hated me for it LMAO i don't think there's a right or wrong way to write a song tho. i think it's all about getting your point across.
I can't describe how much i appreciate this album... it speaks to me alot, especially the fact that it mentions topics that are considered "taboo" in the western world such as wars, as someone who is Syrian that witnessed and lived a war, i was so glad someone talked about it on their platform and i was really mad when i knew that youtube put the video down, i know its considered as "graphic violence" but this is literally what happens in our countries!! She was really ahead of her time and i love her to death for doing it
tysm for sharing! it’s so interesting seeing what happened to her in 2010 vs what’s happening to a lot of people voicing their support for global issues atm (plus her own ongoing support which i will always applaud her for)
Thank you for making this! This is my fav MIA album. I will say, I don't think "Born Free" is a story about a job interview. It's her doing an interview as an artist (radio or magazine, etc). It's the inherent contradiction of being a famous pop-star but also essentially having an underground/DIY sensibility/past ("the higher you go, you feel lower"). It goes hand in hand with songs like "Boho Dance" by Joni Mitchell. Always out of place. At the top or the bottom.
the music video (the uncensored , long ass video that youtube may have taken down because of how explicit it was) is even better . that tells a whole story right along with the song
No one got this album, including me. I was a huge fan but it just didn't land. I only understood this music when I revisited it in maybe 2020 and was blown away. She could see so far into the future that had you played this album for someone who doesn't know it and told them it was just released recently, they would have believed you. Not to mention the aesthetics for that era - no one got them, and fast forward to 2015, the whole internet used them. SHOCKING to me how little acknowledgement she gets. Everyone wants to tell you how Lana Del Rey and Lorde are responsible for the way pop music sounded in late 2010s but there is so much more to that and M.I.A being largely ommitted from these conversations is a great example.
This lady had meshed musical ideas onto a sonically harsh/experimental album that would soon inspire a new subgenre that’s now multiplying in this new generation of music. But can we talk about the creative direction of MAYA, I love it a lot.
SEAT TAKEN /\/\ /\ Y /\ is sooooo good even if she is crazy edit: watched the vid this is wery well covered my god but i would talk about the switch up on the public and M.I.A. even if she released the banger mixtape Vicki Leekx, it was highly acclaimed even if she was still protesting same exact topics of /\/\ Y /\
You've put everything I've ever thought about this album into words. I love your music knowledge it's so on point. Thank you for a very accurate and great video
Dude I’m so glad I found your channel!! The stuff you cover is my music taste to a tee. MIA, sleigh bells, grimes, mag bay, rosalia, pc music is like exactly what I’m into. She was right about everything on that record btw, and ahead of the curve sonically. Hope you also cover arular at some point, that album is so so good, it might honestly be my all time favorite
I saw MIA at a music festival when this album came out. Awesome show. Loved the album when it came out and still love it now. Still can't believe the video for XXXO is just a bunch of MySpace glitter comments.
OMG thank you so much for this video, great work! I forgot how obsessed I was with this album when it came out and it’s crazy to think just how ahead of her time she was. I totally thought she sampled Sleigh Bells, did not know it was the other way around! I also never realized “It takes a muscle” was a cover and I now I love the original!!! I hope you make a video on Matangi or AIM some day, especially since they are both mixed bags lmao. ILLYGIRL
a little correction here! you said that one of M.I.A's influences for this album was deconstructed club, but actually deconstructed club *did not exist yet* (at least not properly, and the term itself wasn't used until like the mid 10's). and in fact this album is sometimes cited as an early pioneer of that sound, which makes it even more forwardthinking :)
This was my first video from you and I really loved it : ) I’ve loved MIA for a long time now but kind of overlooked this project and now I’m going to give it another try - really well done!
I remember finding this album via some really old and probably dead pirate music site in 6th grade and obsessing over xxxo. I had already been slightly aware of M.I.A. due to paper planes being a frequent request when my dad used to make mix cds, but i didn't know much else until i started ripping and torrenting music myself (lol sorry). I sort of fell down a rabbithole from there. This is a great video.
I love Drag Race and MIA so I’m glad I found this channel. I actually quite liked It Takes a Muscle but to each their own. I used to put her albums on my iPod and listen to them on repeat. This was probably the last one I did that for, though… I think I was still using an iPod in 2010. Can you believe that’s 14 years ago?
folks just now figuring out the genius that is Mathangi Arulpragasam 👀👀 she’s much more than “Galang” and “Paper Planes” . she always had some kind of message behind her music and was always brilliant
Her releasing this on my, a Cancerian’s, birthday is serving witchy woo. Psychic eleganza. Mother knows best. Edit: she’s a July Cancerian. Her messy method of processing trauma - for all to consume - makes immaculate sense.
arular and kala are both basically 10s, that shit is so perfect. It's honestly crazy that paper planes hit #4 on the billboard hot 100 when you think about how fucked up some of the production is on that record. Bird flu into boyz on the same record with a #4 mainstream hit just cuz of the weed movie? Crazy shit imo. When maya dropped I only loved two of the tracks, tequkilla and it takes a muscle, I still feel exactly the same way. There's no question going back and listening to tequkilla it sounds like some proto death grips shit, but we can't forget that we were already years deep into the og uk dubstep scene existing at that point, even the cheesy skrillexy american dubstep was around by then. A year before maya's release hyperdub put out the "5 years of hyperdub" comp that put a lot of people on, this type of bonkers layered intense clubby production with what some people would call "annoying" synths/samples wasn't exactly new. MIA adding the whole computers/internet aesthetic to it was pretty fresh, and to her credit the sound palette definitely was unique, it's not like these tracks sounded exactly like some hyperdub shit. I got infinite respect for MIA cuz of her first two records, and I've always been the guy trying to point out how maya sounds pretty head of it's time, but really I don't think we can chock it up to anything more than a coincidence. MIA wasn't predicting the future, I wouldn't even go as far as to say this record was all too influential in the way things panned out. Death grips, hyperpop, whatever stuff you can take to point at maya and say "she kinda did it first", all that stuff has it's own organic evolution that can be followed just fine without this album ever existing. Either way though, she /did/ kinda arrive in that territory first, and that's definitely super interesting and impressive. I haven't loved anything she's done since this, It doesn't matter though, she's still a fucking legend
paper boyfriend back at it again!!! i love your album synonpsis videos and the way you contextualize the artists and songs. I'm curious what you think about Matangi (the album)? to me, it's another album that was foundational for hyperpop.
matangi is an interesting one bc it has some of her best material like ever (bad girls, bring the noize, the first four full tracks) but also some of her most boring (exo/sexodus, know it ain’t right) so i definitely agree that it’s a foundational album but i don’t catch myself listening to the whole thing that often
thank youuu I've been obsessed with MIA recently and looking through her backlog. Those early albums are so good and she's such an interesting person. Ahead of the curve until she became an anti-vaxxer
MIA is ahead of her time because of the powerful people she is associated with. On a side note, her baby daddy is a multi-generational billionaire and when they divorced, Jay-Z forced her to stay in her apartment for years, took her child away from her, and told her she can’t release music. MIA at that time was under JAY-Z’s label and he was being funded by the billionaire baby daddy.
When I was 24 and was introduced to MIA, she inspired me to follow my dreams. Especially after I learned that she was already in her 30s at the time. If I hadn’t had the moment, I don’t know who or where I’d be. Don’t know if that’s good or bad. But I’m happy I took those risks. My one smh moment was standing next to her on a corner in Brooklyn many years later and not saying a word to her. It was probably the bodyguard she had with her. Anyways, always Mother Maya 🤎
sonically this is honestly one of my favorite MIA albums and i had a hard time listening to you break down steppin up without absolutely goin wild to it in the background
I love this video but I see this “..guys her entire thing has always been about being divisive and stirring the pot…” point a bad takeaway from what M.I.A’s art and political philosophy was actually about. I find it reductive to both, and it also makes me think the person who says that just wants to school the “fake fans” who don’t know her history. of course she’s always been divisive, but to dumb it down to the point where you extirpate the very obvious political reasons for why, you aren’t being charitable to what she’s actually about.. and how she’s NOT like that anymore. -what she speaks for now, although conspiratorial and controversial like before, is just harmful nonsense. like why are you using your phone for instagram if you really think it’s radioactive.. 😭😭she cares abt us that much ig.
@@exophilo yeah, Madonna was booked for the superbowl half town show as part of a girl power thing and she picked MIA to support her but mia gave the camera a middle finger, resulting in fines and embarrassed maddens
she's so crazy, I love her.
Shes also an anti vaxxer
@@1faulthello? Based department?
@@1faultwhich makes her even more badass
@@1fault oh shes gonna hate me then lmao
Aaaand she’s just gone on Alex jones 😭talk abt timing
As someone who’s had a similar war-filled, refugee living upbringing I relate to MIA SOOO much! We’re literally the kids that could see through all the social BS but were outcasted or called conspiracy theorist for insights. Now everyone is coming back to us going “you were right!”
I also feel like a theme in XXXO is a commentary to the general public - how this album is a transition period from her being more obscure to part of America’s mainstream with paper planes, but with all that mainstream attention comes expectations on what she should be in terms of a popstar. But she’s like no, idgaf, imma be sleepy on this sleazy beat on purpose
totally! i didn’t really talk about the transition from kala/paper planes to this album but yeah this song is definitely a response to what she’s “supposed to do” with all the success that song gave her
M.I.A. you will forever be trendy and cool
Shes an anti-vaxxer
this album came to me in such a strange period of my life. i was in music production school and really struggling with loneliness and internet addiction. the sounds and lyrics hit me hard at the time and made me reconsider what a song could be. ended up experimenting a lot more with my production and my professors hated me for it LMAO i don't think there's a right or wrong way to write a song tho. i think it's all about getting your point across.
omg i love it 😭😭😭 if there’s any album to do that it’s this one!
I can't describe how much i appreciate this album... it speaks to me alot, especially the fact that it mentions topics that are considered "taboo" in the western world such as wars, as someone who is Syrian that witnessed and lived a war, i was so glad someone talked about it on their platform and i was really mad when i knew that youtube put the video down, i know its considered as "graphic violence" but this is literally what happens in our countries!!
She was really ahead of her time and i love her to death for doing it
tysm for sharing! it’s so interesting seeing what happened to her in 2010 vs what’s happening to a lot of people voicing their support for global issues atm (plus her own ongoing support which i will always applaud her for)
@@paper_boyfriend yeah she literally paved the way.. and she's been vocal about palest!ne since day 1 and I will always love her for it
As someone who has spent too much of their life listening to Death Grips, there is undeniably no way they didn’t draw a lot of inspiration from M.I.A.
100%
I love this video. She’s been one of my favorite artists since I was 13, despite disagreeing with her more recently.
Thank you for making this! This is my fav MIA album. I will say, I don't think "Born Free" is a story about a job interview. It's her doing an interview as an artist (radio or magazine, etc). It's the inherent contradiction of being a famous pop-star but also essentially having an underground/DIY sensibility/past ("the higher you go, you feel lower"). It goes hand in hand with songs like "Boho Dance" by Joni Mitchell. Always out of place. At the top or the bottom.
i really like this interpretation! i saw it as more of a third-person commentary but this is super interesting too
the music video (the uncensored , long ass video that youtube may have taken down because of how explicit it was) is even better . that tells a whole story right along with the song
/\/\/\Y/\ in 2024??? amazing
I literally had no clue that meds and feds used the riff before treats omg I just assumed it was sampled
I was desperately waiting for someone to make a video essay on this album lol Thank you so much for this
tbh i was surprised nobody had done it yet!
No one got this album, including me. I was a huge fan but it just didn't land. I only understood this music when I revisited it in maybe 2020 and was blown away. She could see so far into the future that had you played this album for someone who doesn't know it and told them it was just released recently, they would have believed you. Not to mention the aesthetics for that era - no one got them, and fast forward to 2015, the whole internet used them. SHOCKING to me how little acknowledgement she gets. Everyone wants to tell you how Lana Del Rey and Lorde are responsible for the way pop music sounded in late 2010s but there is so much more to that and M.I.A being largely ommitted from these conversations is a great example.
This lady had meshed musical ideas onto a sonically harsh/experimental album that would soon inspire a new subgenre that’s now multiplying in this new generation of music. But can we talk about the creative direction of MAYA, I love it a lot.
ikr messy in the best way possible
SEAT TAKEN /\/\ /\ Y /\ is sooooo good even if she is crazy
edit: watched the vid this is wery well covered my god but i would talk about the switch up on the public and M.I.A. even if she released the banger mixtape Vicki Leekx, it was highly acclaimed even if she was still protesting same exact topics of /\/\ Y /\
A great deep dive into one of my favourite albums of all time
Please make videos covering Arular and Kala too
thank you! and i would love to!
steppin up is so good 😮💨
i used to love this album, the interactive website she built for the rollout was the best
Pirated this album when I was 15 and just bought the physical CD in 2024. It still bangs
This is a really well made video and great analysis, was suprised you dont have many other videos
You've put everything I've ever thought about this album into words. I love your music knowledge it's so on point. Thank you for a very accurate and great video
her best album yup
Dude I’m so glad I found your channel!! The stuff you cover is my music taste to a tee. MIA, sleigh bells, grimes, mag bay, rosalia, pc music is like exactly what I’m into.
She was right about everything on that record btw, and ahead of the curve sonically. Hope you also cover arular at some point, that album is so so good, it might honestly be my all time favorite
omg thx u i love this album it’s so underrated
lovalot is one of my fav mia songs
I saw MIA at a music festival when this album came out. Awesome show. Loved the album when it came out and still love it now. Still can't believe the video for XXXO is just a bunch of MySpace glitter comments.
soooooo jealous omg 😭
@@paper_boyfriend it was a good time! she performed at Coney Island in NYC
OMG thank you so much for this video, great work! I forgot how obsessed I was with this album when it came out and it’s crazy to think just how ahead of her time she was. I totally thought she sampled Sleigh Bells, did not know it was the other way around! I also never realized “It takes a muscle” was a cover and I now I love the original!!! I hope you make a video on Matangi or AIM some day, especially since they are both mixed bags lmao. ILLYGIRL
a little correction here! you said that one of M.I.A's influences for this album was deconstructed club, but actually deconstructed club *did not exist yet* (at least not properly, and the term itself wasn't used until like the mid 10's). and in fact this album is sometimes cited as an early pioneer of that sound, which makes it even more forwardthinking :)
it’s crazy that you’re blowing up now, i remember seeing ur vapor trails video like months agoo
great video ily
tysm! 💞
I also revisited this album in 2024. I was surprised to see someone making an entire video essay on it just when I was obsessively listening to it
This was my first video from you and I really loved it : ) I’ve loved MIA for a long time now but kind of overlooked this project and now I’m going to give it another try - really well done!
THIS IS WHAT I WANNA SEE…..U GOT NEW FAN LOVE UR CONTENT ❤
this might be the first time I've ever set the playback speed on a video essay to .75x instead of 1.5x
FINALLY SOMEONE GIVES THIS WOMAN A PROPER VIDEO 🤍🥰
I remember finding this album via some really old and probably dead pirate music site in 6th grade and obsessing over xxxo. I had already been slightly aware of M.I.A. due to paper planes being a frequent request when my dad used to make mix cds, but i didn't know much else until i started ripping and torrenting music myself (lol sorry). I sort of fell down a rabbithole from there.
This is a great video.
20 dollar is my all time favorite song by her but she has so many other bangers
I love Drag Race and MIA so I’m glad I found this channel. I actually quite liked It Takes a Muscle but to each their own. I used to put her albums on my iPod and listen to them on repeat. This was probably the last one I did that for, though… I think I was still using an iPod in 2010. Can you believe that’s 14 years ago?
4 Rugirl references in one vid about a completely unrelated topic thank you for spreading the gospel
it’s my calling card
This is the media I want and this is the media my children will consume
generational media
folks just now figuring out the genius that is Mathangi Arulpragasam 👀👀 she’s much more than “Galang” and “Paper Planes” . she always had some kind of message behind her music and was always brilliant
Great video but I will say Maya was released only a few months before the first death grips project
Her releasing this on my, a Cancerian’s, birthday is serving witchy woo. Psychic eleganza. Mother knows best.
Edit: she’s a July Cancerian. Her messy method of processing trauma - for all to consume - makes immaculate sense.
FUCKKKK shes my spirit animal sri lankan tamil july cancer ????? the coincidences are crazy
Grateful for MIA fr. Paper planes was the soundtrack to my childhood as I approached my pre teens.
Oh im seated
MAYA is the Sanskrit/Hindu word for ILLUSION
MY FAVORITE CZcamsR
YAY TYSM 😭💕💕💕
good analysis :D
thank you!!!
Oof not the candace owen pic. But she has brought attention to a lot of needed things and her music will always be timeless
arular and kala are both basically 10s, that shit is so perfect. It's honestly crazy that paper planes hit #4 on the billboard hot 100 when you think about how fucked up some of the production is on that record. Bird flu into boyz on the same record with a #4 mainstream hit just cuz of the weed movie? Crazy shit imo. When maya dropped I only loved two of the tracks, tequkilla and it takes a muscle, I still feel exactly the same way. There's no question going back and listening to tequkilla it sounds like some proto death grips shit, but we can't forget that we were already years deep into the og uk dubstep scene existing at that point, even the cheesy skrillexy american dubstep was around by then. A year before maya's release hyperdub put out the "5 years of hyperdub" comp that put a lot of people on, this type of bonkers layered intense clubby production with what some people would call "annoying" synths/samples wasn't exactly new. MIA adding the whole computers/internet aesthetic to it was pretty fresh, and to her credit the sound palette definitely was unique, it's not like these tracks sounded exactly like some hyperdub shit. I got infinite respect for MIA cuz of her first two records, and I've always been the guy trying to point out how maya sounds pretty head of it's time, but really I don't think we can chock it up to anything more than a coincidence. MIA wasn't predicting the future, I wouldn't even go as far as to say this record was all too influential in the way things panned out. Death grips, hyperpop, whatever stuff you can take to point at maya and say "she kinda did it first", all that stuff has it's own organic evolution that can be followed just fine without this album ever existing. Either way though, she /did/ kinda arrive in that territory first, and that's definitely super interesting and impressive. I haven't loved anything she's done since this, It doesn't matter though, she's still a fucking legend
we NEED a retrospective VICKI LEEKX video!
paper boyfriend back at it again!!! i love your album synonpsis videos and the way you contextualize the artists and songs. I'm curious what you think about Matangi (the album)? to me, it's another album that was foundational for hyperpop.
matangi is an interesting one bc it has some of her best material like ever (bad girls, bring the noize, the first four full tracks) but also some of her most boring (exo/sexodus, know it ain’t right) so i definitely agree that it’s a foundational album but i don’t catch myself listening to the whole thing that often
Drums on Born Free are by Igor Cavalera from Sepultura fact fans.
When I say this is my favorite record ever, im not joking
thank youuu I've been obsessed with MIA recently and looking through her backlog. Those early albums are so good and she's such an interesting person. Ahead of the curve until she became an anti-vaxxer
I clicked so fast!
MIA is ahead of her time because of the powerful people she is associated with. On a side note, her baby daddy is a multi-generational billionaire and when they divorced, Jay-Z forced her to stay in her apartment for years, took her child away from her, and told her she can’t release music. MIA at that time was under JAY-Z’s label and he was being funded by the billionaire baby daddy.
maybe she got into bg (cia, nsa) so shes spreading findings, imagine
When I was 24 and was introduced to MIA, she inspired me to follow my dreams. Especially after I learned that she was already in her 30s at the time. If I hadn’t had the moment, I don’t know who or where I’d be. Don’t know if that’s good or bad. But I’m happy I took those risks. My one smh moment was standing next to her on a corner in Brooklyn many years later and not saying a word to her. It was probably the bodyguard she had with her. Anyways, always Mother Maya 🤎
she really a pioneer damn EVERYTIME I hear paper planes nowadays I’m grateful ppl at least still know and hear her
ive found my people
your voice says like a cat dying
Well yes!
22:44 lol thats gabby start not jane remover
Britpop ranking when
MIA is such a legend.
My queen MIA
sonically this is honestly one of my favorite MIA albums and i had a hard time listening to you break down steppin up without absolutely goin wild to it in the background
9:05 You think that's weird? Born Free was used in a Need For Speed game, in the same soundtrack as Ruling Me by fucking Weezer.
so... no VICKI LEEKX mention but the truffle french fries get a whole section?????
no bc vicki leekx deserves its own video…
@@paper_boyfriend oh... we cheer
I love this video but I see this “..guys her entire thing has always been about being divisive and stirring the pot…” point a bad takeaway from what M.I.A’s art and political philosophy was actually about. I find it reductive to both, and it also makes me think the person who says that just wants to school the “fake fans” who don’t know her history. of course she’s always been divisive, but to dumb it down to the point where you extirpate the very obvious political reasons for why, you aren’t being charitable to what she’s actually about.. and how she’s NOT like that anymore.
-what she speaks for now, although conspiratorial and controversial like before, is just harmful nonsense. like why are you using your phone for instagram if you really think it’s radioactive.. 😭😭she cares abt us that much ig.
VICKILEEKX NEXT PLEASE
i find if it’s not the world it’s the people
Good review I agree with a lot of it I disagree with some of it.
Yeah, the targetting ads are getting crazier. O__o
subbed liked loved engaged with
will forever have a soft spot for M.I.A. and this album because of vicki leekx fr
I'M SAAAATTTTTT !!!!!!
i still cant get over how the frogs thing ended up being true after all
22:44 sis thats gabby start not jane 😭
ah… damn ☹️😭 i think i mistook this photo shoot with the one she and jane did for office mag
She IS genius
Madonna wasn’t kidding when she said she would kill MIAd Career
Can you explain?
@@exophilo yeah, Madonna was booked for the superbowl half town show as part of a girl power thing and she picked MIA to support her but mia gave the camera a middle finger, resulting in fines and embarrassed maddens
Been a fan of M.I.A since Arular, she's so rad! Also not here for the It Takes a Muscle OR Space slander 😤😤😤
she'd be cool if she was not a right winger
Edit: Free Palestine!
People hated this album? It's my personal favorite lol😄🙌🏾MiA is my goat
no she's absolutely right about the vaccines wtf are you on 😂
Hell yes this album is amazing