M.I.A.

Nitsuh Abebe from Pitchfork talks about the recent kerfuffle between M.I.A. and the NYTimes.

If she starts spending more time adjusting that cloak than releasing good tracks, she might have a problem. But for us as listeners, there's another easy trick, which is to approach any good music she makes from the standpoint that the cloak is, well, kinda bullshit-- that she's a normal person, unsophisticated and flawed like anyone, who does not actually have any grand authority or credibility that other people lack. Isn't it possible to swallow the music and spit out the cloak? To not act like she's speaking for anything beyond her own messy self?

That's one way to navigate the distance between pop and a UN subcommittee. There are other "political" artists out there who could probably sit down and explain their viewpoints, patiently and thoroughly and sensibly, for days. But for a lot of them, no amount of focused thinking has resulted in a package that's quite as resonant, engaging, or accessible as what M.I.A.'s turned out in the past. Which leaves us all deciding how much we care about resonance versus how much we care about right-- not because they're opposites, but because thus far Arulpragasam's been a hell of a lot better with one than the other.

Read the whole column here.