by Matt Hanson

originally published in Flak Magazine

People don't really feel like immigrants or refugees contribute to culture in any way.  That they're just leeches that suck from whatever.                                                                     

                                                                                    -M.I.A.           

            Summer has a depth to it, a weight, a bit of darkness.  The heat clings to you, the nights are thicker and the people begin to mix.  There's an intimacy to summertime that responds well to deep beats and low rhythm.  As a (incessantly tempted) non-dancer, I find it harder to restrain myself when the weather is warm.  Summer is seductive, risky.  You wear less by necessity.  You go out more, talk to strangers.  It feels like a certain kind of invitation.       

            I discovered this song only recently, when it was played for me by a friend who occasionally DJ's at a sports bar.  The opening sample- The Clash's enigmatic, brilliant "Straight To Hell"- went pretty much unnoticed.  It's the right sample in oh so many ways.  Strummer's lyrics and delivery take on a sort of stream-of-consciousness of the mind of a Vietnamese immigrant to England.  After a bit of research, I discovered that M.I.A is using her rather seductively militant chorus, rife with gunshots and cash registers, as satire.  It's a great switchup moment.  The chorus kicks in edgy and brisk, with the perceived notions of a Lou Dobbs, say, getting spun back into a victory for the ironic mind.  This is what the priggish and provincial see when they notice people like this, and M.I.A turns it into a song which makes its presence felt in sexier, deeper sounds than the bleating of any America firster.        

            The guitar looms and crackles.  The dawning of the beat rises and begins to shift as she starts in with the sarcasm of the lyrics:

I fly like paper get high like planes

if you catch me at the border I've got visas in my name

...

sometimes I think sittin on trains every stop I get to I'm clockin' that game

everyone's a winner now we're making that fame

Bona-fide hustler making my name

        I love it when singers are talking themselves up while knowing that their boasting is just the icing on the cake.  If you didn't know already, nothing was going to tell you.       

            It might be Anglophilia, but there's something about the cocky sneer of the chorus lines, sung by British children in a resolute drawl, which gains immensely by the accent.  Changing money to muh-naaay just does it right, even if its merely a slip of the tongue.  M.I.A's coda slides in, intoning with a lethally feline groan and that cool distant glamour which you already know from way back in the day: "M.I.A/ third world democracy/ I got more records than the KGB/ So, uh, no funny business...." Third world subversion was never this sexy.  I hereby contend that she is, in fact, killing 'em softly with her song.  And summer's got more than a little to do with what the French call le petit mort.  So there.