M.I.A., “Come Walk With Me”

Matangi, M.I.A.’s first album in three years, is out today. Here’s “Come Walk With Me,” a catchy sing-along first released two months ago that’s probably the easiest entry point to the album, at least on first listen — per her piece at Noisey yesterday, Hairpin pal Ayesha A. Siddiqi might call it a “nursery rhyme for post-colonial angst”:

M.I.A’s choice to borrow imagery from disparate groups and turn it into iconography isn’t appropriative; it’s the natural instinct of a diasporic identity. South Asians are already forced to invest in the panethnic “other” constructed by the West; we keep getting beat up for looking like Arabs slash Muslims slash terrorists. Called all three, M.I.A subverts the conflation to her advantage. Welcome to Worldtown.

The whole album’s available on Spotify now, and also embedded on M.I.A.’s YouTube page.