Maya (M.I.A. album)
Encyclopedia
Maya is the third studio album
by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A.
, released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings
and Interscope Records
. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr
and Rusko
. M.I.A.'s long-time associates Diplo, Switch
and her brother Sugu Arulpragasam also worked on the album, which was mainly composed and recorded at M.I.A.'s house in Los Angeles.
The album's tracks centre on the theme of information politics and are intended to evoke what M.I.A. called a "digital ruckus". Elements of industrial music
were incorporated into M.I.A.'s sound for the first time. A deluxe edition was released simultaneously, featuring four bonus tracks. Critics' opinions of the album were generally favourable although divided, with both its musical style and lyrical content each attracting praise and criticism. In its first week of release, the album entered the UK Albums Chart
at number 21, becoming her highest-charting album in the UK. It also became her highest-charting album in the US, reaching number nine on the Billboard 200
, and debuted in the top ten in Finland, Norway, Greece and Canada.
M.I.A. promoted the album by releasing a series of tracks online, including "Born Free
", which was accompanied by a short film-music video
, which generated controversy due to its graphic imagery. She also performed at music festival
s in the US and Europe to coincide with the album's release. During her promotion of the album, she became embroiled in a dispute with Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times
.
in 2007, which achieved widespread critical acclaim and was certified gold
in the United States, and silver
in the United Kingdom. Six months after giving birth to her son Ikyhd in February 2009, she began composing and recording her third studio album in a home studio section of the Los Angeles house she had bought with her partner Ben Bronfman. She used instruments such as the portable dynamic-phrase synthesizer Korg Kaossilator
to compose. She took the beat machine and began recording atop Mayan
pyramids in Mexico
. Much of the work on the album was undertaken at her house in Los Angeles, in what she called a "commune environment", before it was completed in a rented studio in Hawaii
. She collaborated with writer-producer Blaqstarr
because, in her opinion, "he simply makes good music". M.I.A.'s collaboration with Derek E. Miller of Sleigh Bells
on the track "Meds and Feds" prompted her subsequent signing of the band to her label N.E.E.T., and according to Miller, this experience gave him the confidence to record the band's debut album Treats
.
Her creative partnership with the comparatively unknown Rusko
grew from a sense of frustration at what she saw as her now more mainstream associates suggesting sub-standard tracks due to their busy schedules. Diplo worked on the track "Tell Me Why", but at a studio in Santa Monica
rather than at the house. He claimed in an interview that, following the break-up of his personal relationship with M.I.A. some years earlier, he was not allowed to visit the house because "her boyfriend really hates me".
Tracks for the album were whittled down from recording sessions lasting up to 30 hours. Producer Rusko, who played guitar and piano on the album, described the pair getting "carried away" in the studio, appreciating the "mad distorted and hectic" sound they were able to create. Rusko said "She’s got a kid, a little one year old baby, and we recorded his heart beat. We’d just think of crazy ideas". Rusko has described M.I.A. as the best artist he has ever worked with, saying that she had "been the most creative and I really had a good time making music with her".
have on news and data collection, while stressing the need for alternative news sources that she felt her son's generation would need in order to ascertain truth. Maya was made to be "so uncomfortably weird and wrong that people begin to exercise their critical-thinking muscles". M.I.A. said "You can Google 'Sri Lanka' and it doesn't come up that all these people have been murdered or bombed, it's 'Come to Sri Lanka on vacation, there are beautiful beaches' ... you're not gonna get the truth till you hit like, page 56, and it's my and your responsibility to pass on the information that it's not easy anymore". Following these comments, M.I.A. received death threats directed at her and her son, which she also cited as an influence on the songs on the album. She summed up the album as a mixture of "babies, death, destruction and powerlessness".
M.I.A. opted to sing, as opposed to rap, on several tracks on the album, telling Rolling Stone
in early 2010 that she wished to produce something different from her previous album, which had "more emphasis on production". In a January 2010 interview with NME
she spoke of being inspired by the film Food, Inc.
and described the album as being about "exploring our faults and flaws" and being proud of them. The closing track, "Space", which was reportedly recorded using an iPhone
app, is a ballad which Mikael Wood, writing in Billboard
, described as "dreamy" and "sound[ing] like a Sega Genesis practicing its pillow talk". In contrast, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune
described "Lovalot" as sounding "like it was recorded in a dank alley, the singer’s voice reverberating amid percussion that sounds like doors creaking and rats scurrying across garbage cans". "XXXO
" draws its inspiration from M.I.A.'s "cheesy pop side", and is based on the theme of the creation of a sex symbol. "Teqkilla" is the only track to address her relationship with Bronfman, through a reference to Seagram
, the company owned by his family. "It Takes A Muscle" is a cover version of a track originally recorded in 1982 by Dutch group Spectral Display, and is performed in a reggae
style. The opening track "The Message", featuring a male lead vocalist, parodies the words of the traditional song "Dem Bones
" to link Google
to "the government". Kitty Empire
wrote in The Observer
that these conspiratorial government connections to Google and the thoughts of Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the Russian teenager who bombed Moscow's tube system in revenge for the death of her husband, were inner-world issues pondered in "Lovalot" with "a mixture of nonsense rhyme, militant posturing and pop-cultural free-flow; her London glottal stop mischievously turns 'I love a lot' into 'I love Allah' ". Ann Powers
in the Los Angeles Times said that "M.I.A. turns a call to action into a scared girl's nervous tic. Synths click out a jittery, jagged background. The song doesn't justify anything, but it reminds us that there is a person behind every lit fuse". Powers also commented on how "Born Free" mixed the boasting style often found in hip hop music
with lines depicting the lives of those enduring poverty and persecution. "Illygirl", a track found only on the deluxe edition of the album, is written from the point of view of an abused but tough teenager, whom critic Robert Christgau
said could be the "kid-sister-in-metaphor" of the swaggering persona adopted by M.I.A. on the track "Steppin' Up".
Samples used on the album were taken from artists as diverse as the electronic
duo Suicide
and gospel
choir the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
. "Internet Connection", one of four bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of the album, was recorded in collaboration with a group of Filipino Verizon workers. M.I.A. described the sound and imagery of the album as capturing a "digital ruckus", adding that "so many of us have become typists and voyeurs". We need a digital moshpit like we’ve never seen, harder than how people were doing it in the punk era
. We need that energy, but digitally". Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of The Fader
commented on the increasingly industrial
feel of the tracks made available prior to the album's release, a style which had not previously been incorporated into her music. M.I.A. herself picked out "Steppin' Up", "Space" and "Teqkilla" as her favourite tracks on the album. She said that she contemplated using only the sound of drills as the backing for "Steppin' Up", but concluded that this was "too experimental" an approach.
of the track listing for the new album. She also commented that at the time she was "open to suggestions" regarding the album's title. Two weeks later, a blog posting on her record label's official website revealed that the album would be entitled /\/\/\Y/\, the punctuation marks spelling Maya, M.I.A.'s own forename. The title follows on from previous albums named after her father (2005's Arular
) and mother (2007's Kala
). Some reviewers used the stylised title while others did not. M.I.A.'s official Myspace
page uses both titles. The album was released in conventional physical and digital formats and as an iTunes LP
.
The album's cover features the singer's face almost completely hidden by YouTube
player bars. MTV
's Kyle Anderson described the cover, which was previewed in June 2010, as "a typically busy, trippy, disorienting piece of art" and speculated that it might be "a statement about 21st century privacy". Additional art direction for the album was provided by Aaron Parsons. M.I.A. used her mother's Tamil phonebook to find a wedding photographer to provide images for the album. Photographers for the album were Ravi Thiagaraja, M.I.A. and Jamie Martinez. Elements of the artwork had previously been used in one of a series of billboard images, all designed by musicians, which were projected onto landmarks in London by a guerrilla project called BillBored during the 2010 British general election. The deluxe edition of the album features a lenticular
slipcase. Music magazine Prefix listed it as one of the ten worst album covers of 2010, likening it to a "child’s first computer-class-assignment".
When questioned about the difficulty of finding her album title on search engines such as Google
, she noted that she chose to use forward slashes and backward slashes due to their ease at being typed and because she liked the way the album title looked on music players such as iTunes
. She also suggested that it was a deliberate attempt to avoid detection by internet search engines. The Guardian
Sian Rowe commented that M.I.A.'s deliberate "shrinking away from a mainstream audience" by the use of difficult, unsearchable symbols was part of a growing new underground scene perhaps trying to create a "generation gap", where only "the youngest and the most enthusiastic" would seek out such band names by reading the right online sources.
, which featured a new song but revealed no information about it other than the heading "Theres space for ol dat I see" (sic). The following day her publicist confirmed that the track was entitled "Space Odyssey" and had been produced in collaboration with Rusko
to protest a travel piece about Sri Lanka printed in The New York Times
. The track appears on the new album under the revised title "Space". The same month, she filmed a short film for the song "Born Free
". At the end of April the track was released as a promotional single, and the short film accompanying the song was released. The film, directed by Romain Gavras
, depicts a military unit rounding up red-headed young men who are then shot or forced to run across a minefield. The film, which also features nudity and scenes of drug use, caused widespread controversy and was either removed or labelled with an age restriction on YouTube
. In the weeks following the release of the film, M.I.A. was the most blogged about artist on the internet, according to MP3 blog aggregator The Hype Machine
. M.I.A. found the controversy "ridiculous", saying that videos of real-life executions had not generated as much controversy as her video. In the run-up to the album's release, "XXXO
", which Entertainment Weekly
described as the "first official single" from the forthcoming album, "Steppin' Up", "Teqkilla" and "It Takes a Muscle" were released online. On 6 July 2010 she made the entire album available via her Myspace
page. In December, "It Takes a Muscle" was released as a two-track promotional single.
The new album was publicised during Jay-Z
's performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April, when a blimp flew across the venue announcing that M.I.A.'s new album would be released on 29 June 2010. M.I.A. promoted the album with a series of appearances at music festivals, including the Hard festival
in New York and The Big Chill
in Herefordshire
. Her performance at the latter was cut short due to a stage invasion by fans. She also performed at the Flow Festival in Finland, where she was joined onstage by Derek E. Miller
playing guitar during her performance of "Meds and Feds", and the LokerseFeesten in Lokeren, Flanders, Belgium, where her performance drew a crowd of 13,500, the biggest of the 10-day music festival. In September she announced a tour that would last until the end of the year.
M.I.A. also promoted the album with an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman
", during which she performed "Born Free" with Martin Rev
of Suicide
playing keyboards, backed by a group of dancers styled to look like M.I.A. In November 2010 she appeared on "Later...with Jools Holland" on British television, performing "Born Free" and "It Takes a Muscle", the latter with members of The Specials
. While promoting the album, M.I.A. became involved in a dispute with Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times
, who interviewed her in March 2010 and whose resulting article portrayed the singer as pretentious and attention seeking. In response, M.I.A. posted Hirschberg's telephone number on her Twitter
page and later uploaded her own audio recording of the interview, highlighting the discrepancies between what she said and what was reported. The piece was criticised for its yellow journalism
by some, however M.I.A. received varying degrees of support and criticism for the ensuing fallout from the media. Benjamin Boles wrote in Now
that, while Hirschberg's piece came across as a "vicious ... character assassination", M.I.A's subsequent actions were "childish" and made her "the laughing stock of the internet". The paper later printed a correction on the story, acknowledging that some quotes had been taken out of context. The incident prompted Boots Riley
of the band Street Sweeper Social Club
to comment on how artists had access to media that allowed writers to be held accountable and that M.I.A.'s move was "brilliant".
called the album "surely the year’s most divisive major-label release". At Metacritic
, which assigns a normalised
rating out of 100 based on reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
score of 68 based on 39 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Reviews of the album began to appear a month before its release after the album leaked in low quality onto the internet. Charles Aaron, writing in Spin
, gave the album four and a half out of five stars, his review deeming the song "Lovalot" her "riskiest gambit yet". Matthew Bennett of Clash
gave a similar score, calling it a "towering work". Mojo
writer Roy Wilkinson called it a "startling fusillade of to-the-moon pop music". Writing for the BBC Online, Matthew Bennett characterised the album as "loud, proud, and taking no prisoners" and also praised the album's lighter tracks, such as "Teqkilla", which he called "enjoyably demented but utterly catchy". Rolling Stone
writer Rob Sheffield said the album was M.I.A.'s "most aggressive, confrontational and passionate yet", praising her "voracious ear for alarms, sirens, explosions, turning every jolt into a breakbeat" and her consequent lyrics as "expansive". Los Angeles Times
writer Ann Powers commended the album as "an attempt by an artist who's defined herself through opposition to engage with the system that she has entered, for better or worse, and to still remain recognizable to herself" characterising Mayas foregrounded ideas as "a struggle worthy of a revolutionary". In his consumer guide for MSN Music
, critic Robert Christgau
gave the album an A rating and complimented its "beats and the spunky, shape-shifting, stubbornly political, nouveau riche bundle of nerves who holds them together".
Other critics were not as complimentary towards the album. Charlotte Heathcote of British newspaper the Daily Express
said that, while M.I.A. could "still lay claim to being one of our most imaginative, uncompromising artists", there were "only glimmers of brilliance" on the album. Chicago Tribune
writer Greg Kot
gave the album two and a half out of four stars and expressed a mixed response towards M.I.A.'s "[embracing] pop more fervently than ever. Entertainment Weekly
s Leah Greenblatt was critical of the album, stating that it sounded "murky and almost punishingly discordant, as if the album has been submerged underwater and then set upon by an arsenal of exceptionally peeved power tools". She went on to state that nothing on the album sounded "truly vital", or as revolutionary as M.I.A. wanted the public to believe. Stephen Troussé, writing in Uncut
, described the album as "anti-climactic" and "self-satisfied" and said that it suffered from "diminished horizons". Mehan Jayasuriya of PopMatters
noted M.I.A.'s "self-aggrandizing" as a weakness, adding that Maya lacks "the focus and confidence of M.I.A.'s previous albums". Jesse Cataldo of Slant Magazine
noted that the album "has the feel of a vanity project" and wrote "It may be an above-average album, but its aesthetic matches her persona only at its shallowest levels, in the thinness of its ideas and the often-forceful ugliness of its message". Chris Richard of The Washington Post
called it "a disorienting mix of industrial clatter and digital slush" and noted "there isn't much to sing along to".
at number 21 in its first week of release, 18 places higher than the peak position achieved by Kala, immediately making it her highest-charting album in the UK. The following week it dropped out of the top 40. It also charted in a number of other European countries, entering the top ten in Finland, Norway and Greece. In the US it debuted at number nine on the Billboard 200
, nine places higher than the peak position achieved by Kala, although it sold only 28,000 copies in its first week of release, compared with the 29,000 which the earlier album sold in the same period. Maya fell to number 34 in its second week on the chart, selling 11,000 copies. The album also topped Billboard
's Dance/Electronic Albums chart and reached the top 10 in two of the magazine's other charts. Maya also entered the top 10 in the Canadian Albums Chart
. The single "XXXO
" reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK, and "Teqkilla" entered the Canadian Hot 100
on digital downloads alone.
named "XXXO" and "Born Free" the number 2 and number 11 best tracks of the year respectively. The album appeared in a number of magazines' lists of the best albums of the year. Spin
placed Maya at number 8 in its list of the best releases of 2010, and Rolling Stone
listed the album at number 19 in its countdown.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A.
M.I.A. (artist)
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , better known by her stage name M.I.A. , is an English singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, painter and director of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of hip hop, electronica, dance, alternative and world music. M.I.A...
, released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings
XL Recordings
XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records.Though only releasing an average of six albums a year, XL Recordings has worked with The Prodigy, Radiohead, The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., Vampire...
and Interscope Records
Interscope Records
Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that currently operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-History:...
. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr
Blaqstarr
Charles Smith, better known as Blaqstarr or DJ Blaqstarr, is a Baltimore, Maryland area rapper, singer, producer, and DJ...
and Rusko
Rusko (musician)
Christopher Mercer, more commonly known as Rusko, is an English dubstep record producer and DJ who was born on 26 January 1985 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.-History:Rusko graduated from Leeds College of Music with a degree in Music Performance...
. M.I.A.'s long-time associates Diplo, Switch
Switch (DJ)
Switch is a UK-based DJ, songwriter, sound engineer and record producer. He is best known for his work with M.I.A. and Santigold.In the fidget house genre, Switch runs his own music label "Dubsided", as well as the label Counterfeet, established in 2006 with fellow producer Sinden...
and her brother Sugu Arulpragasam also worked on the album, which was mainly composed and recorded at M.I.A.'s house in Los Angeles.
The album's tracks centre on the theme of information politics and are intended to evoke what M.I.A. called a "digital ruckus". Elements of industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
were incorporated into M.I.A.'s sound for the first time. A deluxe edition was released simultaneously, featuring four bonus tracks. Critics' opinions of the album were generally favourable although divided, with both its musical style and lyrical content each attracting praise and criticism. In its first week of release, the album entered the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
at number 21, becoming her highest-charting album in the UK. It also became her highest-charting album in the US, reaching number nine on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, and debuted in the top ten in Finland, Norway, Greece and Canada.
M.I.A. promoted the album by releasing a series of tracks online, including "Born Free
Born Free (M.I.A. song)
"Born Free" is a song by recording artist M.I.A., released alongside an accompanying short film/music video of the same name from her third album, /\/\/\Y/\. "Born Free" was released as the unofficial first single from the album and premiered on internet music stores on April 23, 2010, with the...
", which was accompanied by a short film-music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
, which generated controversy due to its graphic imagery. She also performed at music festival
Music festival
A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...
s in the US and Europe to coincide with the album's release. During her promotion of the album, she became embroiled in a dispute with Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
.
Composition and recording
British-Tamil musician M.I.A. (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) released her second album KalaKala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
in 2007, which achieved widespread critical acclaim and was certified gold
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
in the United States, and silver
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...
in the United Kingdom. Six months after giving birth to her son Ikyhd in February 2009, she began composing and recording her third studio album in a home studio section of the Los Angeles house she had bought with her partner Ben Bronfman. She used instruments such as the portable dynamic-phrase synthesizer Korg Kaossilator
Korg Kaossilator
The Korg Kaossilator KO-1 is a portable dynamic-phrase synthesizer manufactured by Korg. It is capable of producing a wide range of sounds, can produce a continuous music loop, and can be tuned to various keys and scales....
to compose. She took the beat machine and began recording atop Mayan
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
pyramids in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Much of the work on the album was undertaken at her house in Los Angeles, in what she called a "commune environment", before it was completed in a rented studio in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. She collaborated with writer-producer Blaqstarr
Blaqstarr
Charles Smith, better known as Blaqstarr or DJ Blaqstarr, is a Baltimore, Maryland area rapper, singer, producer, and DJ...
because, in her opinion, "he simply makes good music". M.I.A.'s collaboration with Derek E. Miller of Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells is an American noise pop music duo. The group released their debut album, Treats, on May 11, 2010.-History:Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sleigh Bells is composed of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss...
on the track "Meds and Feds" prompted her subsequent signing of the band to her label N.E.E.T., and according to Miller, this experience gave him the confidence to record the band's debut album Treats
Treats (album)
Treats is the debut studio album by American noise pop duo Sleigh Bells, released jointly on May 11, 2010 by Mom + Pop Music and N.E.E.T. Recordings.-Track listing:*"Rill Rill" samples "Can You Get to That?" by Funkadelic.-Recording:...
.
Her creative partnership with the comparatively unknown Rusko
Rusko (musician)
Christopher Mercer, more commonly known as Rusko, is an English dubstep record producer and DJ who was born on 26 January 1985 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.-History:Rusko graduated from Leeds College of Music with a degree in Music Performance...
grew from a sense of frustration at what she saw as her now more mainstream associates suggesting sub-standard tracks due to their busy schedules. Diplo worked on the track "Tell Me Why", but at a studio in Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
rather than at the house. He claimed in an interview that, following the break-up of his personal relationship with M.I.A. some years earlier, he was not allowed to visit the house because "her boyfriend really hates me".
Tracks for the album were whittled down from recording sessions lasting up to 30 hours. Producer Rusko, who played guitar and piano on the album, described the pair getting "carried away" in the studio, appreciating the "mad distorted and hectic" sound they were able to create. Rusko said "She’s got a kid, a little one year old baby, and we recorded his heart beat. We’d just think of crazy ideas". Rusko has described M.I.A. as the best artist he has ever worked with, saying that she had "been the most creative and I really had a good time making music with her".
Music and lyrics
M.I.A. called the new project "schizophrenic", and spoke of the internet inspiration that could be found in the songs and the artwork. She also said that the album centred on her "not being able to leave [Los Angeles] for 18 months" and feeling "disconnected". She summed up the album's main theme as information politics. During the recording of the album, she spoke of the combined effects that news corporations and GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
have on news and data collection, while stressing the need for alternative news sources that she felt her son's generation would need in order to ascertain truth. Maya was made to be "so uncomfortably weird and wrong that people begin to exercise their critical-thinking muscles". M.I.A. said "You can Google 'Sri Lanka' and it doesn't come up that all these people have been murdered or bombed, it's 'Come to Sri Lanka on vacation, there are beautiful beaches' ... you're not gonna get the truth till you hit like, page 56, and it's my and your responsibility to pass on the information that it's not easy anymore". Following these comments, M.I.A. received death threats directed at her and her son, which she also cited as an influence on the songs on the album. She summed up the album as a mixture of "babies, death, destruction and powerlessness".
M.I.A. opted to sing, as opposed to rap, on several tracks on the album, telling Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
in early 2010 that she wished to produce something different from her previous album, which had "more emphasis on production". In a January 2010 interview with NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
she spoke of being inspired by the film Food, Inc.
Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. is a 2008 American documentary film directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner. The film examines corporate farming in the United States, concluding that agribusiness produces food that is unhealthy, in a way that is environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and...
and described the album as being about "exploring our faults and flaws" and being proud of them. The closing track, "Space", which was reportedly recorded using an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
app, is a ballad which Mikael Wood, writing in Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
, described as "dreamy" and "sound[ing] like a Sega Genesis practicing its pillow talk". In contrast, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
described "Lovalot" as sounding "like it was recorded in a dank alley, the singer’s voice reverberating amid percussion that sounds like doors creaking and rats scurrying across garbage cans". "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
" draws its inspiration from M.I.A.'s "cheesy pop side", and is based on the theme of the creation of a sex symbol. "Teqkilla" is the only track to address her relationship with Bronfman, through a reference to Seagram
Seagram
The Seagram Company Ltd. was a large corporation headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that was the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in the world. Toward the end of its independent existence it also controlled various entertainment and other business ventures...
, the company owned by his family. "It Takes A Muscle" is a cover version of a track originally recorded in 1982 by Dutch group Spectral Display, and is performed in a reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
style. The opening track "The Message", featuring a male lead vocalist, parodies the words of the traditional song "Dem Bones
Dem Bones
Dem Bones, Dry Bones or Dem Dry Bones is a well-known traditional spiritual song, used to teach basic anatomy to children. The melody was written by African-American author and songwriter James Weldon Johnson . Two versions of this traditional song are used widely, the second an abridgment of the...
" to link Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
to "the government". Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire is the pen name of a British writer and music critic.Empire was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1970 and brought up in Canada, Italy and Egypt before arriving in Britain in 1988....
wrote in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
that these conspiratorial government connections to Google and the thoughts of Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the Russian teenager who bombed Moscow's tube system in revenge for the death of her husband, were inner-world issues pondered in "Lovalot" with "a mixture of nonsense rhyme, militant posturing and pop-cultural free-flow; her London glottal stop mischievously turns 'I love a lot' into 'I love Allah' ". Ann Powers
Ann Powers
Ann Powers is an American writer and pop music critic.Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s...
in the Los Angeles Times said that "M.I.A. turns a call to action into a scared girl's nervous tic. Synths click out a jittery, jagged background. The song doesn't justify anything, but it reminds us that there is a person behind every lit fuse". Powers also commented on how "Born Free" mixed the boasting style often found in hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
with lines depicting the lives of those enduring poverty and persecution. "Illygirl", a track found only on the deluxe edition of the album, is written from the point of view of an abused but tough teenager, whom critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
said could be the "kid-sister-in-metaphor" of the swaggering persona adopted by M.I.A. on the track "Steppin' Up".
Samples used on the album were taken from artists as diverse as the electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
duo Suicide
Suicide (band)
Suicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo....
and gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
choir the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers were a sacred harp choir specializing in gospel music. On April 16, 1928, they recorded several songs for Columbia, amongst which was "Present Joys", later included on the Anthology of American Folk Music. They are most commonly referenced alongside Alan Lomax, who...
. "Internet Connection", one of four bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of the album, was recorded in collaboration with a group of Filipino Verizon workers. M.I.A. described the sound and imagery of the album as capturing a "digital ruckus", adding that "so many of us have become typists and voyeurs". We need a digital moshpit like we’ve never seen, harder than how people were doing it in the punk era
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
. We need that energy, but digitally". Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of The Fader
The Fader
The FADER, or FADER, is an United States-based music/culture/fashion magazine that covers hip-hop, reggae, independent rock, pop and dance music from around the world.-Overview:...
commented on the increasingly industrial
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
feel of the tracks made available prior to the album's release, a style which had not previously been incorporated into her music. M.I.A. herself picked out "Steppin' Up", "Space" and "Teqkilla" as her favourite tracks on the album. She said that she contemplated using only the sound of drills as the backing for "Steppin' Up", but concluded that this was "too experimental" an approach.
Release and artwork
The album was originally set to be released on 29 June 2010, but in May M.I.A.'s record label announced a new release date of 13 July. In late April, the artist posted a twitpicTwitpic
TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to the Twitter microblogging and social media service. TwitPic is often used by citizen journalists to upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event is taking place.-History:...
of the track listing for the new album. She also commented that at the time she was "open to suggestions" regarding the album's title. Two weeks later, a blog posting on her record label's official website revealed that the album would be entitled /\/\/\Y/\, the punctuation marks spelling Maya, M.I.A.'s own forename. The title follows on from previous albums named after her father (2005's Arular
Arular
Arular is the 2005 debut album by British musician M.I.A. Originally set for a September 2004 release, the album was delayed due to problems obtaining permission to use samples. Arular was finally released in the US on 22 March 2005 and a month later in the UK with a slightly different track...
) and mother (2007's Kala
Kala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
). Some reviewers used the stylised title while others did not. M.I.A.'s official Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
page uses both titles. The album was released in conventional physical and digital formats and as an iTunes LP
ITunes LP
iTunes LP is a format for interactive album artwork introduced by Apple Inc. on the 9 September 2009. It is similar to the CMX format being developed by the 4 major record labels, and operates within the iTunes 9 software, allowing the user to view multimedia elements alongside the music...
.
The album's cover features the singer's face almost completely hidden by YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
player bars. MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
's Kyle Anderson described the cover, which was previewed in June 2010, as "a typically busy, trippy, disorienting piece of art" and speculated that it might be "a statement about 21st century privacy". Additional art direction for the album was provided by Aaron Parsons. M.I.A. used her mother's Tamil phonebook to find a wedding photographer to provide images for the album. Photographers for the album were Ravi Thiagaraja, M.I.A. and Jamie Martinez. Elements of the artwork had previously been used in one of a series of billboard images, all designed by musicians, which were projected onto landmarks in London by a guerrilla project called BillBored during the 2010 British general election. The deluxe edition of the album features a lenticular
Lenticular printing
Lenticular printing is a technology in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles...
slipcase. Music magazine Prefix listed it as one of the ten worst album covers of 2010, likening it to a "child’s first computer-class-assignment".
When questioned about the difficulty of finding her album title on search engines such as Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, she noted that she chose to use forward slashes and backward slashes due to their ease at being typed and because she liked the way the album title looked on music players such as iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
. She also suggested that it was a deliberate attempt to avoid detection by internet search engines. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
Sian Rowe commented that M.I.A.'s deliberate "shrinking away from a mainstream audience" by the use of difficult, unsearchable symbols was part of a growing new underground scene perhaps trying to create a "generation gap", where only "the youngest and the most enthusiastic" would seek out such band names by reading the right online sources.
Promotion
In January 2010, M.I.A. posted a video clip on TwitterTwitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, which featured a new song but revealed no information about it other than the heading "Theres space for ol dat I see" (sic). The following day her publicist confirmed that the track was entitled "Space Odyssey" and had been produced in collaboration with Rusko
Rusko (musician)
Christopher Mercer, more commonly known as Rusko, is an English dubstep record producer and DJ who was born on 26 January 1985 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.-History:Rusko graduated from Leeds College of Music with a degree in Music Performance...
to protest a travel piece about Sri Lanka printed in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The track appears on the new album under the revised title "Space". The same month, she filmed a short film for the song "Born Free
Born Free (M.I.A. song)
"Born Free" is a song by recording artist M.I.A., released alongside an accompanying short film/music video of the same name from her third album, /\/\/\Y/\. "Born Free" was released as the unofficial first single from the album and premiered on internet music stores on April 23, 2010, with the...
". At the end of April the track was released as a promotional single, and the short film accompanying the song was released. The film, directed by Romain Gavras
Romain Gavras
Romain Gavras is a French director, best known overseas for directing M.I.A.'s controversial video for "Born Free". His films and music videos are often portrayed in a gritty and realistic manner as well as using flashing images.-Biography:...
, depicts a military unit rounding up red-headed young men who are then shot or forced to run across a minefield. The film, which also features nudity and scenes of drug use, caused widespread controversy and was either removed or labelled with an age restriction on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. In the weeks following the release of the film, M.I.A. was the most blogged about artist on the internet, according to MP3 blog aggregator The Hype Machine
The Hype Machine
-History:The Hype Machine was created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College. The site was born out of Volodkin's frustration with music magazines and radio stations. He said, "I discovered MP3 blogs like Stereogum and Music for Robots...
. M.I.A. found the controversy "ridiculous", saying that videos of real-life executions had not generated as much controversy as her video. In the run-up to the album's release, "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
", which Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
described as the "first official single" from the forthcoming album, "Steppin' Up", "Teqkilla" and "It Takes a Muscle" were released online. On 6 July 2010 she made the entire album available via her Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
page. In December, "It Takes a Muscle" was released as a two-track promotional single.
Jay-Z
Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...
's performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April, when a blimp flew across the venue announcing that M.I.A.'s new album would be released on 29 June 2010. M.I.A. promoted the album with a series of appearances at music festivals, including the Hard festival
HARD (music festival)
Hard is a national music festival, music cruise and concert brand founded by Gary Richards in 2007. The event line-ups consist of high-profile alternative, electronic and rock acts and cutting edge emerging talents. The first Hard Music Festival was held on December 31, 2007 in Downtown Los...
in New York and The Big Chill
The Big Chill (music festival)
The Big Chill is an annual festival of alternative, dance and chill-out music and comedy, held in the grounds of Eastnor Castle during early August...
in Herefordshire
Herefordshire
Herefordshire is a historic and ceremonial county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire" NUTS 2 region. It also forms a unitary district known as the...
. Her performance at the latter was cut short due to a stage invasion by fans. She also performed at the Flow Festival in Finland, where she was joined onstage by Derek E. Miller
Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells is an American noise pop music duo. The group released their debut album, Treats, on May 11, 2010.-History:Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sleigh Bells is composed of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss...
playing guitar during her performance of "Meds and Feds", and the LokerseFeesten in Lokeren, Flanders, Belgium, where her performance drew a crowd of 13,500, the biggest of the 10-day music festival. In September she announced a tour that would last until the end of the year.
M.I.A. also promoted the album with an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman is a nightly hour-long comedy talk show on NBC that was created and hosted by David Letterman. It premiered in 1982 as the first incarnation of the Late Night franchise and went off the air in 1993, after Letterman left NBC and moved to Late Show on CBS. Late Night...
", during which she performed "Born Free" with Martin Rev
Martin Rev
Martin Rev is an American musician and the instrumentalist in the electronic proto-punk band, Suicide. He also has a solo career and has released several solo albums for a number of labels, including ROIR and Puu...
of Suicide
Suicide (band)
Suicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo....
playing keyboards, backed by a group of dancers styled to look like M.I.A. In November 2010 she appeared on "Later...with Jools Holland" on British television, performing "Born Free" and "It Takes a Muscle", the latter with members of The Specials
The Specials
The Specials are an English 2 Tone ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry, England. Their music combines a "danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk's energy and attitude", and had a "more focused and informed political and social stance" than other ska groups...
. While promoting the album, M.I.A. became involved in a dispute with Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, who interviewed her in March 2010 and whose resulting article portrayed the singer as pretentious and attention seeking. In response, M.I.A. posted Hirschberg's telephone number on her Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
page and later uploaded her own audio recording of the interview, highlighting the discrepancies between what she said and what was reported. The piece was criticised for its yellow journalism
Yellow journalism
Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism...
by some, however M.I.A. received varying degrees of support and criticism for the ensuing fallout from the media. Benjamin Boles wrote in Now
NOW (magazine)
Now is a free weekly newspaper in Toronto, Canada. It was first printed on September 10, 1981 by Michael Hollett and Alice Klein. Now is an alternative weekly mixing arts and entertainment news with political coverage....
that, while Hirschberg's piece came across as a "vicious ... character assassination", M.I.A's subsequent actions were "childish" and made her "the laughing stock of the internet". The paper later printed a correction on the story, acknowledging that some quotes had been taken out of context. The incident prompted Boots Riley
Boots Riley
Boots Riley is an American musician, vocalist, writer, and public speaker most known for being the front man and producer of The Coup as well as the front man for Street Sweeper Social Club.-Biography:...
of the band Street Sweeper Social Club
Street Sweeper Social Club
Street Sweeper Social Club is an American Rap Rock supergroup, formed in Los Angeles, California in 2006. The band primarily consists of guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and vocalist/emcee Boots Riley of The Coup. The band has been testing songs out during Tom Morello's...
to comment on how artists had access to media that allowed writers to be held accountable and that M.I.A.'s move was "brilliant".
Critical response
Music critics were divided in their reviews of Maya. Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
called the album "surely the year’s most divisive major-label release". At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalised
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 based on reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 68 based on 39 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Reviews of the album began to appear a month before its release after the album leaked in low quality onto the internet. Charles Aaron, writing in Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
, gave the album four and a half out of five stars, his review deeming the song "Lovalot" her "riskiest gambit yet". Matthew Bennett of Clash
Clash (magazine)
Clash is a popular music and fashion magazine based in the United Kingdom. Its magazine title is published 12 times a year. It has a circulation of around 40,000....
gave a similar score, calling it a "towering work". Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
writer Roy Wilkinson called it a "startling fusillade of to-the-moon pop music". Writing for the BBC Online, Matthew Bennett characterised the album as "loud, proud, and taking no prisoners" and also praised the album's lighter tracks, such as "Teqkilla", which he called "enjoyably demented but utterly catchy". Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
writer Rob Sheffield said the album was M.I.A.'s "most aggressive, confrontational and passionate yet", praising her "voracious ear for alarms, sirens, explosions, turning every jolt into a breakbeat" and her consequent lyrics as "expansive". Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
writer Ann Powers commended the album as "an attempt by an artist who's defined herself through opposition to engage with the system that she has entered, for better or worse, and to still remain recognizable to herself" characterising Mayas foregrounded ideas as "a struggle worthy of a revolutionary". In his consumer guide for MSN Music
MSN Music
MSN Music was a part of the MSN web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. In 2004, Microsoft created an MSN Music download store to compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store, though its sales in comparison were...
, critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
gave the album an A rating and complimented its "beats and the spunky, shape-shifting, stubbornly political, nouveau riche bundle of nerves who holds them together".
Other critics were not as complimentary towards the album. Charlotte Heathcote of British newspaper the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
said that, while M.I.A. could "still lay claim to being one of our most imaginative, uncompromising artists", there were "only glimmers of brilliance" on the album. Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
writer Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
gave the album two and a half out of four stars and expressed a mixed response towards M.I.A.'s "[embracing] pop more fervently than ever. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
s Leah Greenblatt was critical of the album, stating that it sounded "murky and almost punishingly discordant, as if the album has been submerged underwater and then set upon by an arsenal of exceptionally peeved power tools". She went on to state that nothing on the album sounded "truly vital", or as revolutionary as M.I.A. wanted the public to believe. Stephen Troussé, writing in Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
, described the album as "anti-climactic" and "self-satisfied" and said that it suffered from "diminished horizons". Mehan Jayasuriya of PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
noted M.I.A.'s "self-aggrandizing" as a weakness, adding that Maya lacks "the focus and confidence of M.I.A.'s previous albums". Jesse Cataldo of Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
noted that the album "has the feel of a vanity project" and wrote "It may be an above-average album, but its aesthetic matches her persona only at its shallowest levels, in the thinness of its ideas and the often-forceful ugliness of its message". Chris Richard of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called it "a disorienting mix of industrial clatter and digital slush" and noted "there isn't much to sing along to".
Commercial performance
The album entered the UK Albums ChartUK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
at number 21 in its first week of release, 18 places higher than the peak position achieved by Kala, immediately making it her highest-charting album in the UK. The following week it dropped out of the top 40. It also charted in a number of other European countries, entering the top ten in Finland, Norway and Greece. In the US it debuted at number nine on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, nine places higher than the peak position achieved by Kala, although it sold only 28,000 copies in its first week of release, compared with the 29,000 which the earlier album sold in the same period. Maya fell to number 34 in its second week on the chart, selling 11,000 copies. The album also topped Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
's Dance/Electronic Albums chart and reached the top 10 in two of the magazine's other charts. Maya also entered the top 10 in the Canadian Albums Chart
Canadian Albums Chart
The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS...
. The single "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
" reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK, and "Teqkilla" entered the Canadian Hot 100
Canadian Hot 100
The Canadian Hot 100 is a music singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks songs in Canada. The chart debuted in the Billboard issue dated June 16, 2007 and was made available for the first time via their online services on June 7, 2007...
on digital downloads alone.
Accolades
In December 2010, NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
named "XXXO" and "Born Free" the number 2 and number 11 best tracks of the year respectively. The album appeared in a number of magazines' lists of the best albums of the year. Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
placed Maya at number 8 in its list of the best releases of 2010, and Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
listed the album at number 19 in its countdown.
Track listing
Bonus tracksPersonnel
The following people are credited on the album:- Maya ArulpragasamM.I.A. (artist)Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , better known by her stage name M.I.A. , is an English singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, painter and director of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of hip hop, electronica, dance, alternative and world music. M.I.A...
– producer (tracks 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15), mixing (track 1, 5, 12, 15), creative direction, art direction, photography, A & R, executive producer - RuskoRusko (musician)Christopher Mercer, more commonly known as Rusko, is an English dubstep record producer and DJ who was born on 26 January 1985 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.-History:Rusko graduated from Leeds College of Music with a degree in Music Performance...
– producer (tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, 12) - BlaqstarrBlaqstarrCharles Smith, better known as Blaqstarr or DJ Blaqstarr, is a Baltimore, Maryland area rapper, singer, producer, and DJ...
– producer (tracks 3, 8, 13, 14, 16), mixing (tracks 13, 14, 16) - Diplo – producer (tracks 7, 11)
- SwitchSwitch (DJ)Switch is a UK-based DJ, songwriter, sound engineer and record producer. He is best known for his work with M.I.A. and Santigold.In the fidget house genre, Switch runs his own music label "Dubsided", as well as the label Counterfeet, established in 2006 with fellow producer Sinden...
– producer (tracks 4, 9), vocal production (track 15), mixing (track 2) - Sugu Arulpragasam – producer (track 1)
- John Hill – producer (track 4)
- Derek E. MillerSleigh BellsSleigh Bells is an American noise pop music duo. The group released their debut album, Treats, on May 11, 2010.-History:Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sleigh Bells is composed of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss...
– producer (track 10), mixing (track 10) - Neal Pogue – mixing (track 2)
- Ben H. Allen – mixing (tracks 3, 11)
- Robert Gardner – mix assistant (tracks 3, 11)
- Shane P. Stoneback- mixing (track 10)
- Aaron Parsons – art direction
Charts
| Chart (2010) | Peak position |
Ref. |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
21 | |
| Austrian Albums Chart Hitradio Ö3 Hitradio Ö3 is one of the national radio stations of Austria's state-run broadcaster ORF.The station focuses on contemporary music. Until 1995 its schedules included many specialist music shows, but following a reorganization of ORF's channels shortly before the introduction in Austria of private... |
53 | |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Flanders) |
20 | |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Wallonia) |
48 | |
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
7 | |
| Danish Albums Chart IFPI Denmark IFPI Denmark is the Danish branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and is the official charts provider and recording sales certification body for Denmark.-Gold and platinum awards:... |
17 | |
| Dutch Albums Chart | 93 | |
| European Top 100 Albums European Top 100 Albums The European Top 100 Albums chart is the European adaptation of the Billboard 200 albums chart. It was created in March 1984.The European Top 100 Albums, commonly referred to as Eurochart Top 100 Albums shows the sales of an act in 19 European countries based on IFPI data.The European Top 100... |
31 | |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 9 | |
| French Albums Chart Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... |
79 | |
| German Albums Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... |
48 | |
| Greek International Albums Chart IFPI Greece International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Greece or IFPI Greece is the Greek branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and is the official charts provider and recording sales certification body for Greece. Currently two charts are compiled, one for sales of... |
10 | |
| Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically... |
47 | |
| Japanese Albums Chart Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc... |
37 | |
| New Zealand Albums Chart Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
21 | |
| Norwegian Albums Chart VG-lista VG-listen is a Norwegian record chart. It is weekly presented in the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation program Topp 20. It is considered the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from countries and continent around the world. The data is collected by... |
8 | |
| Swedish Albums Chart Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... |
31 | |
| Swiss Albums Chart Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... |
27 | |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
21 | |
| UK Independent Albums Chart UK Indie Chart The UK Independent Chart or Indie Chart is a chart of the best-selling independent record releases in the UK.- History :In the wake of punk, small record labels began to spring up, as an outlet for artists that were unwilling to sign contracts with major record companies, or were not considered... |
2 | |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
9 | |
| US Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums | 1 |