Pop music has a way of forgiving artists on a hot streak. You can say, do, or get accused of horrible things, but most of time, if you're delivering the goods, the public will remain on your side. This is why R. Kelly is like Teflon, and why outrage regarding Michael Jackson's scandals and peculiarities only truly hobbled him when the quality of his music began to slide in the early 1990s. Madonna, too, has proven herself capable of multiple comebacks following creative missteps and P.R. disasters. Right or wrong, the social contract is simple: If you bring the hits, we'll put up with your shit.
With ///\Y/, M.I.A. has broken that contract. And she could not have chosen a worse time to do it. The album comes not long after a New York Times Magazine cover story that portrayed her as a pretentious, truffle fries-eating phony spouting radical politics at odds with her extremely comfortable lifestyle. The piece was devastating to her credibility, and her childish response-- putting the author's cell number on Twitter-- only made matters worse. It seems likely that ///\Y/ will only accelerate this M.I.A. backlash. The record is a shambling mess, devoid of the bangers that characterized Arular and Kala, two of the stronger pop albums of the past decade. It aims to capture a technological and cultural zeitgeist in its over-stimulated, digitally degraded sound, but the songs are too flimsy to carry her bold conceit. Without compelling tunes, the obnoxious public antics, dubious political messages, and thin voice that had grated on her naysayers have become impossible for even dedicated fans to ignore. It's as if everything that was great about M.I.A. has been stripped from this music, leaving behind only the most alienating aspects of her art and public persona.
It's hard to tell whether ///\Y/ is half-assed or half-baked. There are certainly a number of good ideas in the mix here, but the execution is lacking. Tracks like "Story to Be Told", "Lovealot", and "Teqkilla" come across like mildly promising demos ready to be edited into sleeker, stronger compositions. Lead single "XXXO" sounds unfinished, as if everyone involved figured they may as well wait around for someone else to make a better remix. Most of the songs are built out of digital clangs and electronic noise, but unlike Kala's "Bird Flu", in which chaotic clatter was the basis for a brilliant track evoking panic and confusion, this cacophony doesn't signify much of anything, aside from perhaps a desire to seem confrontational and daring. There are moments of interesting noise, but in the absence of appealing grooves or memorable hooks, it barely matters.
The production credits on ///\Y/ aren't too different from Kala or Arular. Regular collaborators Switch and Diplo are back, but their contributions are disappointing despite their previous chemistry with M.I.A. "Tell Me Why", one of two songs with Diplo, aims in the general direction of the pop crossover success of "Paper Planes", but the beat is limp, and the song is marred by a poor, heavily Auto-Tuned vocal performance. "Born Free", produced by M.I.A. with Switch, is appealingly aggressive and punky, but the intentionally amateurish sound diminishes rather than accentuates its visceral impact. "Steppin' Up", a Switch collaboration with Rusko, is the album's most successful attempt at grafting her jarring new aesthetic to a traditional M.I.A. rhyme, but it's still a far cry from, say, "Bamboo Banga" or "Pull Up the People". Both producers get lost in this deliberate clutter.
M.I.A.'s new collaborators don't fare any better. Dubstep producer Rusko seems to be the most dialed-in to her current muse, but his tracks are better at evoking vague menace than provoking physical movement. Sleigh Bells' Derek E. Miller, author of some of 2010's most inspired and aggressive bangers, is wasted here. Rather than providing a track as enormous as "Kids" or "Crown on the Ground", his riff from the Sleigh Bells tune "Treats" is mutated into the haphazard "Meds and Feds". That song is not a total disaster, but it's certainly a missed opportunity and a poor application of a strong guitar riff. Sugu's intro track "The Message" is the worst thing on an album of failed experiments-- a bad demo with a simplistic, paranoid rap that's as rhetorically effective as someone in a dorm room ranting about the C.I.A. inventing A.I.D.S. It's not the best idea to kick off your politically charged album with a song that demolishes the possibility of addressing a serious issue about privacy with any degree of depth or nuance.
It's not exactly a surprise that M.I.A. would opt to create such an off-putting and anti-pop album at this point in her career. She may be reaching for an interesting and provocative style, but her motives seem defensive in nature-- reasserting her artsy, agit-prop cred not long after breaking through to the mainstream and becoming engaged to the heir of the Bronfman liquor fortune. On a superficial level, ///\Y/ is a challenge, but it's really more of a retreat. She's shrinking from her chance to engage with a mainstream audience, and refusing to live up to her potential as a pop artist. One hopes that ///\Y/ is just a detour, a misstep, something she had to get out of her system before getting back on track.
