50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Top 10 Albums

#9. Kala
by MIA

It turns out that Maya "MIA" Arulpragasam is a pretty serious person, so the planned Three Six Mafia track and a few Timbaland collaborations that might have taken this daughter of a Sri Lankan rebel leader's second album pop just didn't make the cut. Instead there are sweltering melodies forged from disco, reggae, rap and Bollywood as well as animal sounds, kiddie choruses, didgeridoos, bells, whistles, zooming cars and what sounds like Silly Putty bouncing around in a rubber room. It's easy to get lost in all the chaos, and that's kind of the point. Kala is a tour of a stateless, chaotic world led by MIAs pop gun vocals. It's not exactly fun, but hard truths rarely are.

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