M.I.A. "Kala" [2007]

Among the reasons Sri Lanka is on absolutely no one's short list of vacation destinations -- with its extreme heat, poverty, pollution and violence -- at the very top has got to be that they apparently listen to crap dance music like M.I.A. Either that or this West Londoner of Sri Lankan descent is faking what dance music in her home country is supposed to sound like, and doing a really terrible job of it. Sloppy, noisy and obnoxious, complete with screaming poultry and garbage being kicked around by far too many wayward children, listening to "Kala" is like imposing yourself deep inside a third-world tenement. It's world music on some really bad acid, Afro-Indi sewer sludge covering every beat and discarded Bollywood scrap. That said, it's easy to figure out how M.I.A. keeps winning glowing reviews from music critics of the West, besides the fact that they can't resist anything with Clash or Pixies music in it: those pastey-white fat-asses aren't going anywhere near Sri Lanka -- ever -- but listening to "Kala" lets them believe they've just visited some sort of exotic hell on earth. "Better you than me, girl. Here's 5 stars."