baby girl!... better known as, uh, maya

I haven’t ‘party-listened’ to the album so I won’t judge all the leaked tracks yet but the extra cheese on ‘Shock Value’ so far is not sitting well with me. An easy judgement comes with this ‘bonus track’ featuring M.I.A. though… Tight.
More difficult question: Why is Ms. Arulpragasam M.I.A. from ‘Shock Value’?
I’m always ready to look past how annoying she comes off outside of her music, especially in those Timbaland studio clips (any wonder why they were pulled off the internets?) as long as her vocals are working over some dope track. And today’s our lucky day.
The weird cultural collage of Middle Eastern?, East Indian? and/or Native American? references (“Go to your tee-pee…”) that this track holds together is that simple Timbo (that’s with an ‘O’ not an ‘A’ newbies!) thingthing that he can do in his sleep. M.I.A.’s simple hook and rapping adds enough texture to the relatively un-layered Tim track to make me wonder if anyone else could have done as successful job. Her minor twist on the threepeat of her ‘Come down’ and ‘Run down’ hooks hit the off-chord just right. And her percussive scat is gonna be great for the hip crowd to botch at her concerts. Tim’s freestyle is typically useless other than adding sound and rhythm… duh! No surprise he does it brilliantly.
Damn the leaked tracks off ‘Shock Value’ for really lowering my expectations for a successful solo Mosely. This might make up for that Elton John crap.

Timbaland, M.I.A – Come Around (via 4shared)