No one on the corner has swagger like us
Boy, I haven’t written here in months. Yeah. Life. What’re you going to do?
Well, I’m going to write. I decided the best way to remedy my lack of posting here was to write about a song that I have been enjoying all summer long. I never imagined it would stay with me well into autumn, which is when I usually like to move to the warmer songs in my catalogue. Your Springsteens and your Elvis Costellos. The space heaters of my music collection. I can hear the power and the heat in their urgent vocals and it gives me a rush of warmth. Which is why I’m surprised to find myself still digging this song.
Because M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” is not warm. There’s energy here, but it’s a cold one. All sharp angles and harsh sounds. Damn the man, and while you’re at it, steal his shit and sell it back to him. Which is not to say I don’t like the song. Quite the contrary. It’s weird, because I’ve seen M.I.A. live, and she throws a fucking party. I mean it. You come to her show, you better get up and dance, hipster. No lingering in the back for you. She’ll pull you up on stage to shake what your mama gave you.
M.I.A. has been on my radar for a couple of years now, but this song, from her second album, Kala, catapulted her to the top of the heap. Maybe because I love the Clash so much and the sampling of “Straight to Hell” is so genius I’m a little bit in love with her. There’s a certain vain egotrip to being a rock critic, but I always assume that if I like something, a shit-ton of other people will like it, too. And while I like the original song, I’m more in love with the Diplo remix, which is from the Homeland Security Remixes album.
Paper Planes is a combination of gritty politics and choice messages for those with power who would abuse it and those without power who only want to make a living. The politics on display here are not just M.I.A.’s “The man hates refugees in America” vibe, but also Joe Strummer’s “Immigrants get fucked over” message. It sure ain’t coca-cola. Not to mention the hustler’s screed of “It’s all in the game” street politics of “play or be played” from lyrical gangsters Bun B. and Rich Boy. The line “You can call five oh and five oh might come, but by the time they arrive all the dirt’s been done” sounds like it could’ve come straight from the lips of the late, great Omar on the equally late and great HBO show, “The Wire.”
Forget how many times you heard the chorus to this song in the trailer for Pineapple Express, this song is the SHIT. M.I.A. has beefed up the Clash loop a little. It’s fuller, fatter and perfectly at home with her laid back vocals and lazy lyrics about immigrants cashing in on the American dream.
My favourite lines? “Get your Robin Hood on/Put some pressure on the man” is a runner up only to “Excuse me, let me introduce my lady: her name is Beretta and she motherfuckin’ crazy.”
Awesome.
Without the rhymes, this song is perfectly serviceable. It’s full of hooks and sounds and kids singing, which I’m sure M.I.A.’s patron saint Strummer would approve of, but M.I.A. is purposefully aloof and detached and Bun B. and Rich Boy are not. It’s the rap that gives this version some added force and grit and the, I don’t know, growling, seething anger it needs to become better than it is.
You can get this shit from iTunes. Or, right here.
