Words by Matthew Mundy
M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” was just nominated for a Grammy, and – were there any type of justice in the world – she’ll win. Well over a year after it was released it continues to be a deliriously perfect song. Able to reconcile the irreconcilable with enviable panache – to be simultaneously harsh and heartbreaking, teeth-baring and heart on sleeve, swaggering and vulnerable. It is that most rare of songs, the intimate anthem, and the cracking of her voice when she sings “pirate skulls and boooones” and the deafening gunshots that herald the hook are like two beasts smashing into each other in paroxysms of absurd ecstasy. The song is super fucking good, basically.
Unsurprising, then, that it was adopted wholesale by Hip-Hop this year – from Kanye jacking the “No one on the corner has swagger like us” for the rapper A-list circle jerk, “Swagga Like Us,” to everyone else jumping on or remixing the song to their heart’s content.
In the interest of good journalism – and TSS is nothing if not a superlative journalistic outlet – reviewing the various iterations, mutations and ill-conceived clusterfucks “Paper Planes” spawned is a necessity. ‘Cause no one on the information superhighway has swagger like us. Read the rest of this entry »
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