Kala

It's interesting to finally listen to the album that the infamous hit "Paper Planes" is included in, because while Kala is considered the album that finally broke M.I.A. into the mainstream, in a way it is wilder, more ambitious and more experimental than her predecessor Arular (which is a personal favourite of mine). "Paper Planes" also logically should not fit into the album, featuring more melancholic synth-heavy production that significantly contrasts the jagged, unkempt, almost overstimulating instrumentation of the other tracks. But it WORKS. In fact a lot of the songs on Kala are like this, a mixture of different inspirations and genres jumbled together into a song that shouldn't make sense but it does, like the Jamaican-dance and Indian-folk combination on the song "Boyz", or the heavily-autotuned, almost psychedelic "20 dollar". All this adds up to a record that is wonderfully colourful, versatile, but slightly uneven. While I might easily prefer Arular for its succinctness and consistency, Kala is absolutely a worthy follow-up.

Favs: Bamboo Banga, Boyz, Jimmy
Least Fav: The Turn