M.I.A.’s New Album Is Here and It’s… Gospel?

“When you think M.I.A. is done and Satan puts a full stop, God puts a comma and says, ‘To be continued.’” Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam says on her seventh studio album, M.I.7.

True to her word, Arulpragasam’s story is ever-evolving. And this new turn as a gospel singer is quite convincing, if a little random. For more than 20 years, M.I.A. has been at the forefront of electronic music, starting out making beats on a Roland MC-505 groovebox that she would beg London club girls to sing over. 

Born to Sri Lankan parents, Arulpragasam and her family moved from London back to northern Sri Lanka when she was six months old. But their displacement due to the Sri Lankan Civil War forced them to return to England when Arulpragasam was 11, strongly informing her political ideology and influences. Her father was peripherally affiliated with the militant Sri Lankan separatist group the Tamil Tigers, which M.I.A. was criticized for supporting. Political unrest runs through M.I.A.’s imagery and sound—“Like PLO I don’t surrender,” she sings on “Sunshowers,” which was censored on television and radio (its video was banned on MTV).

In her songs, M.I.A. has been brash, loud, and unafraid to piss people off. She zips from war to colonialism to technology to corporate greed—often framing life simply as a battle between civilization vs. exploitation. (In fact, “People vs. Money” was the title of her 2008 tour). “I’m allowed to be pissed at mates who are yanks / Cause it’s not me and you, it’s the fucking banks!”” she yells on the dizzying track “Bring the Noize.” Despite a yearning for truth-telling, she often gets caught up in conspiratorial thinking. She opened 2010’s noisy, power-drill-filled MAYA with “THE MESSAGE,” alleging that people’s headphones are connected to the government, which was mocked initially but eventually given credence by Edward Snowden’s leaks. 

Since then, she’s dipped her toes into murkier water, linking 5G data networks to the COVID pandemic in April 2020. And in 2022, after InfoWars host Alex Jones was ordered to pay a defamation settlement to the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, she tweeted, “If Alex Jones pays for lying, shouldn’t every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too?” She started the clothes-wear line OHMNI (also her new record label), that sells boxer briefs, ponchos and, cheekily, tin-foil hats billed as “your last frontier at preserving your privacy, autonomy, and rights over your body and your data.” The poncho is $200.

On X, she’s an outspoken opponent of anything and everything, especially political and violent conflicts. And like all conspiracy theorists, she has thoughts about the Jews. “There are 2 Jewish blood lines, one that Jesus came from and one a [sic] imposter satanic one,” she tweeted on February 28 when the United States and Israel first launched attacks on Iran. In response to someone asking why she went off the deep end, she said, “ARABS AND JEWS JUST WANNA FIGHT, CHRISTIAN ARE BIASED.” All of this even though she was engaged to the Jewish businessman Benjamin Bronfman for close to three years—and even had a child with him, who Arulpragasam described as “Tamil Black and European Jewish.”

Despite her provocations, she’s remained in the cultural consciousness—just recently, DJ Major Lazer brought her out at the Coachella festival to sing “Paper Planes,” her mega-hit satirizing American xenophobic attitudes that appeared in the film Slumdog Millionaire. But her recent work, 2016’s AIM and 2022’s MATA were limp in comparison with the erratic, energy-fueled oddities of 2005’s Arular or 2007’s Kala. Following in their footsteps, M.I.7 dances around alt-pop and hip hop, but it feels hollow. But there’s a new, big theme.

In 2017, after claiming to have had a vision of Jesus, Arulpragasam became a born-again Christian. “It turned my world upside down,” she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “because everything I thought and believed was no longer the case.” It was, creatively, a wild time. “Even if it costs me my career, I won’t lie. I will tell the truth, and I will tell you what’s on my mind and my heart. If I’m coming back now saying Jesus is real, there’s a point. Basically all of my fans might turn against me.”

This sudden, religious turn could have inspired some interesting music, but the record is largely filled with platitudes and dull worship. Once sharp-tongued and clever, M.I.A. resoundingly sounds like a Christian camp counselor, trying to convince kids that Jesus is cool: “God does have a cape, that’s not a cap / He gave me armour, truth and fact,” she raps; “Lust, jealousy, and envy / Is a vibes killer”; “This is hella real but the devil real fake.” 

Maybe the Christian turn isn’t as unexpected as one might think. Christian gospel is the fastest-growing genre behind rock music, the music company Luminate reports. Contemporary Christian music (CCM) is experiencing breakthroughs as well—the genre grew 60 percent over the last five years, and artists like Brandon Luke (“Hard Fought Hallelujah”) and Forrest Frank (“Your Way’s Better”) are hitting the Billboard Hot 100 with wholesome worship. Even Justin Bieber enlisted Chance the Rapper for a song called “Holy.” A growing group of young men are saying religion is “very important” to them, and Americans more generally hold it in a positive view.

A return to Christian nationalism—as evidenced through our politics—could work its way into broader music and culture. And while I certainly wouldn’t criticize Arulpragasam’s journey—“I’m free, please don’t ever leave me” she prays on “JESUS”—it does, however, result in a pretty boring album.

Even though M.I.7 is largely a Christian lovefest, an undercurrent of conspiratorial thinking runs through its veins. The usual rhetoric of rejecting Satan’s attempts to make one sin are there, but so are more intangible lines, like, “The evil don’t control me”; “And the wars the enemy wage, they’re gonna pay”; “I fight rulers of darkness, the diabolic and heartless.” It’s curious whether, in regard to her previous conspiratorial tweets, she’s solely invoking religious themes, or something more sinister. If “everything I thought and believed was no longer the case,” how do we take stock of her older music, firm-footed and uncompromising?

In any case, M.I.7 feels like a good example of what happens when a public and private self merge. One might look past her provocative lyricism simply because “Galang” is so good, but others may say eccentric music isn’t an explanation for tweets that piss people off. 

And who gets to decide what tips the scale? Kanye West’s tours are sold out, but Róisín Murphy, who railed against gender-affirming surgery for minors on Facebook days before her 2023 album was released, was dropped by her label and shunned by her queer fans. Working your politics into the music is typical for M.I.A., but after a slew of radical albums railing against the system, it’s strange to see her fall back into something as ubiquitous as Christianity.

At least M.I.7 usually basks, not urges. The album is largely about Arulpragasam’s salvation, not necessarily about convincing anyone to join her (the closest she gets is the advice to keep a journal). Even her early work had the sly conviction of her rightness, the confidence of figuring the system out. With the exception of some passing references to Satan, M.I.7 is a happy album, largely untormented by her past ideas. A song like “MONEY”—as on-the-nose as a M.I.A. song can be—could’ve struck gold in 2010, but here, she just brags about having a lot of it. “Click, click, crypto silver and gold,” she raps. She flaunts the hard work, too—praying and fasting have resulted in self-acceptance and love. It’s better to be in a good mental place, I suppose, than to release a good album. M.I.A. has arrived at a destination, but maybe her music needs to catch up. “I felt glory, I say glory,” she says during one particularly convincing verse. “I set fire to all my worry / My past no longer holds me / I say ‘Victory!’”

(Top image credit: Interscope Records (CC BY-SA 4.0))