Rap Music Goes Punjabi Bhangra

The Globalization of Hip Hop With M.I.A.

Feb 19, 2009 Shelley Aylesworth-Spink

Politics and art combine for musician M.I.A. who can take credit for igniting an international movement blending rap music with hip hop and the twang of bhangra.

M.I.A. is the performance name of Mathangi Arulpragasm, is a U.K. rapper from London who emerged around the millennium with a fresh, genre-hopping sound. Lately, she became a new mother, after giving birth to a baby boy mere days after hip hopping and dancing around the 2009 Grammy Awards stage with a bold polka dot, belly-clinging jumper and fellow rap stars TI, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne.

Already, as she wrote on her website at miauk.com, M.I.A. is planning tour dates for 2010.

Tours Included Gwen Stefani, Holy F*ck, LCD Soundsystem

M.I.A.’s tour partners have included joining with Gwen Stephani on Stephani’s inagural solo tour in 2005 and with Canada’s improvisational electronica group Holy F*ck. She has also been variously joined by Roots Manuva, LCD Soundsystem, Spank Rock, DJ’s Rekha, Marlboro and Contra.

However, the year before motherhood would become perhaps the most crucial in the development of her music. She toured in support of her 2007 mainstream chart-successful album Kala but ended the tour by cancelling the European tour dates in June and July to spend time working on a new album. Kala is also the first name of M.I.A.’s mother.

In 2008, M.I.A. started her music label, N.E.E.T. and signed her first artist, Rye Rye, or Ryeisha Berran, a U.S. rapper from Baltimore, Maryland. Rye Rye met M.I.A. in a studio after M.I.A. overheard one of her songs and the two toured together in 2007 and early 2008 and briefly with rap artist Afrikan Boy.

M.I.A. Is also working on her own new album which will include using instruments such as the Korg Kaossilator, a pocket-sized synthesizer capable of producing about 100 different acoustic, percussion and electronic sounds in dozens of different scale patterns.

International Music Captures Academy Award Nomination

2008 was also a year when M.I.A. recorded a cover of Tom Waits' Way Down in the Hole with Blaqstarr, which would be the hit TV show The Wire’s main theme song. The How Many Votes Fix Mix Extended Play, featuring a remix of Boyz with Jay-Z, was also released in 2008.

As a record producer, however, M.I.A. biggest critical achievement to date are her songs contributed for A. R. Rahman's score of Slumdog Millionaire, which included the collaboration O Saya. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Politics and art are a constant mix for the artist. She was born in Sri Lanka and her family fled the country for England owing to political turbulence. Her art has been controversial for its criticism of the U.S. War on Terror movement and attention to government oppression.

M.I.A. blazes a path of genre-crossing music and art and in the process, picks up an international and growing group of fans anxious for her next albums and performances.

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