This is M.I.A.

So I'm late to the party, but my mind's officially blown. For the last week, I've been listening almost exclusively to M.I.A., an artist I hadn't even heard at the top of the month. Her first proper album, Arular, was so unlike anything I'd heard before that I had to do some reading up just to wrap my head around what I was listening to. Here's enough to give you a foothold:

What you need to see:
If you've got iTunes, you can hit up the Music Store for the video to the breakout 2003 single "Galang" and the new video "Sunshowers."

What you need to hear:
Not to keep pimping the iTunes store, but they're also offering "Galang" as the free Single of the Week. As the New Yorker put it in their recent profile, describing the last movement of the song:

And then the music stops. We are left with a queasy keyboard peal as a multitrack chorus of Mayas calls out, "Ya ya heeey, woy oy ee he hay yo.” It isn’t a pop chorus, or any sound that you'd hear on American radio, even if the station were playing, you know, world music. It's a voice from a place where kids throw rocks at tanks, where people pull down walls with their bare hands. It could be the sound of a carnival, or a riot.

What you need to read:
The New Yorker article linked above is a good place to start. This insightful Pitchfork interview also starts with a helpful list of "Ten things you probably already know about M.I.A."

M.I.A.: I wanted to make "Sunshowers" because I thought what I could bring to music was something that I wish R&B singers brought to music. When they go on about being a Nubian queen and being proud of their African heritage, I think, "Well why don't you go to Africa and show me?" That was the difficult thing for me in the music industry, like, do I have to be Western in order to get Western music across on Western television? What if I brought to England what I know, all the things I've seen? Can I communicate them through what I do?

How easy would it be for me to get a stylist and a choreographer and shoot a video? It's easy! All you need is a checkbook. Then I was like, "Well, I'm gonna sit on an elephant and just say my lines." Because I can! If I'm going to live in Western society for the rest of my life, I've got the rest of my life to stare at beautiful clubs and lighting and dancers, so why not bring in an elephant and chuck it into the mix?

Finally, this Cokemachineglow page carries not only a review of Arular, but also reviews and free, full MP3s of its unofficially-released, sample-heavy predecessor, Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1 and her DJ Diplo's breakthrough baile funk mix tape, Favela on Blast.

From there Diplo ups the ante, mixing in elements of American pop culture. "Row, Row, Row your Boat" morphs into "Ice Ice Baby," which is even weirder than it sounds when all the lyrics are in Portuguese (another great choice is Verve’s "Bittersweet Symphony" kicking in at 27:04).

Anyway, I'll work on this post when I have more time, but I wanted to get a starter up so I have something to point to while I'm talking this up.

Update: The time is now: my buddy Greg Higley pitched in with this Wikipedia article that provides further political and historical info on Maya and her father, for whom Arular was named. And the Slate article "The World Is Phat" places M.I.A. and Diplo within the context of the burgeoning global sub-genres of hip-hop.