M.I.A Drops Frenetic, Dizzying Video for "Bring the Noize"
We haven't heard much about M.I.A.'s fourth album Matangi in recent months, but a new video for lead single "Bring the Noize" may mean that the British provocateur is ready to take baby steps back into the spotlight.
The video finds a pink-haired M.I.A. hanging in an underground club whose dancers wear all-white like some avant-garde hipster version of a Diddy Hamptons party. Epileptics should avoid this dizzying, frenetic clip.
Matangi, scheduled for release this fall, has been a long time coming. In April 2012, the singer posted her first new clip from the album with the text "MATANGI2012." Last summer, MIA tweeted that "no one in the industry collected blows in the last 3 years as much as me. [The new album] is a f-ck you to them and a thank you to you," while also noting that Matangi sounded like "Paul Simon on acid."
While Matangi was expected to be released last December, the singer announced in November that the album would be delayed indefinitely. One month later, she told an Australian site, "I thought I'd finished it. I finished it and then I handed the record in, like a couple of months ago," but that her label found the work to be "too positive."
"It's like 'We just built you up as the public enemy No. 1 and now you're coming out with all this positive stuff.'" Positivity be damned. We want angry, combative M.I.A.
Asked about the inspiration behind the title, the singer noted: "When I went to India, I was looking on Google for stuff that was the color of a certain green, and that's when this green goddess, Matangi, popped up," she said. "I was like, that's weird, the whole time I've been alive on this planet, my mom never mentioned where my name came from. Matangi was the goddess of knowledge and the arts—music, art, dancing, spoken word. When they invented this mythology 4,000 years ago, the concept of someone being about all those things was normal."
While we impatiently wait, we'll be over here bumpin that Matangi Mix if you need us.
23m
19m
23m
1m
20m
5m
2m
1m
1m
9m
3m
1m
20m
20m
1m
2m
3603s
21m
21m
20m
24m
21m
12m
2m
20m
1m
1m
23m
2m
8m
2m
2m
5m
2m
1h 39m
57m
2m
2m
1m
20m
51s
20m
1m
46s
41m
41m
21m
1m
3m
46m
53m
46m
2m
5m
4m
21m
18m
2m
44m
22m
20m
1h 21m
1m
24m
30s
2m
7m
20m
1m
1m
1h 45m
1h 2m
24m
2m
1h 16m
23m
1h 34m
1h 21m
1m
1h 21m
45m
44m
21m
20m
1h 27m
1h 20m
41m
4m
1m
21m
20m
24m
42m
10m
2m
2m
20m
2m