M.I.A.

Politics and music have always been uneasy bedfellows, but 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam knows about unease. The Sri Lankan native’s family fled that country’s civil war for Britain more than 20 years ago, and her father — linked to the divisive revolutionary outfit the Tamil Tigers — remains M.I.A., a moniker Maya has adopted for her equally revolutionary debut. Emerging from the same urban wilderness as the Streets and Dizzee Rascal — and putting those two to shame — M.I.A.’s Arular is fearless and aggressive. She knocks listeners unconscious with her snarling, confrontational approach: part Jamaican dancehall toaster, part dirty American rapper, part monastic Tibetan chanter, part British jungle MC. She also disguises her very serious lyrical messages in what sounds like borderline nonsense; her topics range from teenage prostitution to war, all spit-rough and ready over punky electro rhythms. Arular‘s cut-and-paste feel and politically fraught nursery-rhyme babble bring to mind toys made of tin in crowded wholesale shops and Third World markets: noisy, manmade, harsh, and difficult to ignore.