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VINYL FORMAT. 'Boasting a stage name that means missing in action (war zone implied), the Brooklyn-based British Sri Lankan has always been mercurial, volatile, elusive. As much smash-and-grab as cut-and-paste. 2005's Arular (titled after her absent militant father) and 2007's Kala (after her refugee single mom) burst with splashes of disorienting static. A fluorescent hall of weed smoke and cracked mirrors. Double-Dutch jumps across borders. But unlike the nomadic cultural-attaché persona she adopted for Kala - after visa issues disrupted plans to record in the U.S. - M.I.A. plants her feet firmly with this self-titled album, which she created primarily in America while tending to a newborn son. Aside from "Lovealot," she proudly proclaims her intentions as a first-world pop star, de-emphasizing found collage and "third-world democracy" for melodic sway and punky bluster (aided by familiar producers Switch, Blaqstarr, and Diplo, plus newbies Rusko and Sleigh Bells' Derek Miller). And as a first-world pop-star mama, what's obsessing M.I.A. day to day? Well, the Internet, of course, and Google and social networking and smart phones, and their subversive/oppressive potential (see her YouTube-crazed cover art). M.I.A.'s most plainspoken tracks, the data-dazed R&B of "XXXO" and "Space Odyssey," speak dreamily of love and technology and how those wires so often get crossed. In the former, a pushy lover is kept at bay ("You Tweetin' me like Tweety Bird"); in the latter, even a Puzzle Bobble game induces paranoia. "My lines are down, you can't call me," she coos. Despite M.I.A.'s fervor to engage the world's battles, even she can feel overly connected.' - Spin Magazine