M.I.A. - Paper Plane

Further proof that MTV has very little to do with real music, it came out over the weekend that the cable network censored the video for the song "Paper Planes" by British artist M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam), the third single released from her new album Kala. Built around a sample of the Clash's classic "Straight To Hell," M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" intersperses a shotgun blast with cash register bells in a very catchy sing-song double-dutch chorus. I'm not quite sure what "Paper Planes" is about (consumerism=violence? a critique of capitalism?), but the song and its accompanying video are both quite entertaining, the sound a mix of hip-hop style vocals and Worldbeat rhythms, with a hint of punkish aggression in the grooves. Besides, the Sri Lanka-born and London-raised Arulpragasam is quite fetching; if her radical roots and political leanings didn't scare the hell out of U.S. media execs, she could be a big star stateside.

Tom Briehan of the Village Voice points out the apparent double-standard when it comes to broadcasting videos on MTV and BET, that rappers are held to a different set of rules than are white rock bands (and, unfortunately, the U.S. corporate media seems to have pigeonholed M.I.A. as a rap artist although she is, really, so much more). Any overt reference to drugs, sex or violence is scrubbed from rap videos by bleeping or silencing the "offensive" language while rock bands can figuratively get away with murder in their videos. As rapper 50 Cent recently pointed out, the "music television" network changed the name of his song "I'll Still Kill" to "I Still Will" while they have no problem playing a song by the band the Killers. M.I.A., in a blog that appeared over the past weekend on her MySpace page (and since pulled?), called MTV's move "sabotage." Her performance of the song on Letterman's TV show was also censored...so is "Paper Planes" a dangerously subversive song or not? Somehow, I think that Joe Strummer would be pleased....

M.I.A. "Paper Planes" (2007)


(Click on the CD cover to buy Kala from Amazon.com)