My babies, my babies! I've been in California the last few weeks, enjoying my farewell Meatball Magic. Practically every friend and acquaintance left in Fresno came out to see me off and I love you all and thank you for shaking ass to my final residential set (Roxy Carmichael-homecoming guest sets to come in the future, I promise). Daniel and I also spent a beach-front weekend in Monterey and it was a great respite before the big move. I'm now an official resident of the Portland/Vancouver metro area (as is half of California by now). This last week consisted of unpacking boxes, shaking sand out of everything, organizing too many books, and enjoying typically amazing weather. Expect many Pacific Northwest-based surprises. Just you wait.
Enough disclosures, now on to the good stuff. So many albums have leaked in my absence from the Internets that I hardly know where to begin. Most importantly? Possibly the most anticipated one yet:
YouTube: M.I.A. - "Bamboo Banga"
It's like Easter Sunday, except with less palm fronds and more lasers. The album's opener, "Bamboo Banga," is indeed a certified banger. There's a Modern Lovers reference, some now-familiar baile funk beats, speeding cars and sirens weighted with bass, and that "Power! Power!" clincher that's the drunken cherry on top of this big sticky floor-filler. The track makes way for its Bollywood foundations at the 3:40 mark (she even does a straight-up cover of this a few tracks later), and it's that layer-cake approach we're used to hearing from M.I.A. that begs us to turn it up to 11.
YouTube: M.I.A. - "World Town"
"Hands up, guns out, represent that world town," she commands on the album's clear, albeit nutso, standout. It echoes the 2 Live Crew's "Face Down Ass Up" by appropriating their call for poon and turning it into a call for worldwide revolution. The sentiment is punctuated by the click clack of guns cocking. You know, just in case you weren't sure. Also? Her use of the word "explodify" is bound to be the next "hateration." Remember that.
YouTube: M.I.A. - "XR2"
I was a 7th grader taping episodes of MTV's 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation in '92. M.I.A. was, by her own admission, listening to hip hop and learning how to jack cars in London. (If you've been under a rock, "M.I.A." is a play on her name, Maya, and the battlefield acronym for someone "missing in action" or, for these purposes, her old London neighborhood of Acton by way of Sri Lanka.) We've all been listening to that shoddy Myspace demo rip of "XR2" for months, so it's great to hear the final album version with all those freshly-polished bells and whistles coming at us from all angles.
If you want to hear it that way, though, all crisp and amazing-like, you'll have to wait until August 21st. That's when Kala drops--and no, you're not imagining things, the MP3s posted here previously have been removed by request and replaced with YouTube links. Sorry, them's the breaks. Go out and buy her album after sampling, just like us. The rest of it is just as incredible--yes, even that song she did with Timbaland that they're both sharing on each other's albums. By the way, if you should feel the need to peruse M.I.A.'s Myspace or official site, here's a tip for all you Firefox users: hitting the Escape key will save you an epileptic seizure by freezing all those animated gifs.
The sun is setting here now, and the smells and sounds of a summer barbeque next door wafting through our open windows are distracting me something fierce, but remind me to tell you about this at some point:
