you see? it's all right there.

everything that made M.I.A. a distinctive voice, and everything that made her experience valid and valuable, and everything that would eventually make her just a bit of a pariah... all of it is here, to some degree or another, and it amounts to a full encapsulation of all that her public-facing career ever has been. whether or not her later spins indict it all, or simply show a more complicated figure than initially let on, i'm not sure who's to say; this project's message exists in a semi-vacuum then, a touchstone of industrial hip-hop all the same. because i don't think anyone else has ever heard that term and taken it so literally.

STEPPIN' UP is the litmus test for it all; whining electronic motors, chainsaws revving, a factory fire, there is at least an immediate gut reaction; the sheer brashness of it all is infectiously, annoyingly fun, whether you love it or... not so much.

but as much as there's been reappraisal for how ahead of the curve this album was and is, it goes so much deeper than that. XXXO explores digital relationships as abstractly and over-the-top as 100 gecs would on their 2019 record; TEQKILLA's filtered pouring-out and clipping synths forecast (or further accentuate) an explosion of deconstructed club turbulence; if the hyperpop connection isn't sold well enough, the Sleigh Bells sample on MEDS AND FEDS pretty much cements it; and BORN FREE incorporates a punk sample as well as Death Grips would on Exmilitary just under a year later.

even the fact electropop has this large an undercurrent, it prophesizes so closely this present drive for artists picking and choosing their catchiest melodies and throwing more and more experimental noise on top of it. of course this record was no sole catalyst for all of it, but the amount of common ties it has with so many future classics gives it such an incredible staying power and timeless credibility.

in its second half though, IT TAKES A MUSCLE and IT IZ WHAT IT IZ move closest to pure(r) electropop, deliberately so; between TEQKILLA and BORN FREE, the record dips away from reckless abandon in ear trauma and towards a weary-eyed hope that, in the midst of the digital hurricane, there is space for your love, your story, your ability to stay 'human', your ability to shrug it all off. but after the vengeful spite comes back and subsides once more, the cycle becomes apparent, and you lose the space to care as much. it's all the same.

there's DNA from this very singular, very particular album across the gamut of popular and underground music; paranoia in a digital age, trying to deal with love in a hopeless world, government subjugation and advertisement shapeshifting... there's now countless projects with similar themes. but few—if more than a handful—are as simultaneously careful and brutally articulated in their construction as /\/\ /\ Y /\ is. and M.I.A. did it all here with a hideously bracketed setting of synth punk and electro-industrial shocks.

can't you see? y r u doing this?