New Anthem for the Bad Girls

With rumors spinning about M.I.A. appearing at this Sunday’s SuperBowl halftime show to do a song w/ the Material Girl & Nicki Minaj, it’s no surprise that Maya dropped a song on the interwebs for all of us to peep. This morning she released the video for her song “Bad Girls” – with the kind of slow beat that makes you want to drop the seat back in your ride and do the gangster lean while rocking a keffiya.

The song is great, but I absolutely LOVE this video – if only because I can imagine Saudi women blasting this rebellious song as they drive unlawfully through the desert. The stunts are pretty legit and gritty without the Hollywood flair too. I feel as if “Bad Girls” skips over Vicki Leex mixtape and goes back to the world orientalist flavor of the Kala days of M.I.A.. I loved the Kala days.

The video, directed by Romain Gavras (see: M.I.A.’s “Born Free”) was shot in Ouarzazate, Morocco, and premiered exclusively on VICE’s new music channel Noisey. The short features daring car stunts that had M.I.A. terrified the entire time.[huffpost]

 

“It was dope to have so many people from so many different backgrounds speaking so many different languages come together to create something that we believed in,” says M.I.A about the video. “I thought I was gonna die on the shoot when I saw the drifting.  It was a four day shoot so everyone was on edge the whole time specifically ME when I had to do bluesteel singing to the camera while the cars did doughnuts on the wet road ten feet away. In my mind I was thinking how I was gonna deliver the video to Vice with no legs.” [bizjournals]

 

But, yo… this track that just premiered with Madonna and Nicki Minaj though leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They dress Nicki and MIA to be cheerleaders and give them a two line rap? And what’s with the blonde wigs to make them look like Madonna/Marilyn? Oh so bad. Video after the jump.

So what do you think? Is this M.I.A.’s swansong or a comeback?

16 thoughts on “New Anthem for the Bad Girls

  1. That Give Me song video completely makes me sick to my ass. Maya is dangerously close to “dead to me”.

      • Hey Taz, I was trying to be sarcastic 🙂 It doesn’t make any sense to me at all, I was just calling about a weak link between the two to make it seem like there was a purpose behind having them be Madonna’s “cheerleaders”.

  2. I don’t like the Madonna video at all but M.I.A.’s new video gives me that old thrill that I felt when I saw her first videos and bought her first album way back in 2005…(2005?…2005!!). I stumbled onto Sepia Mutiny (way back then) after I saw the last half of the “Galang” video on MTV and Googled “M.I.A.” and I’ve been checking out this website just about every day since then.

  3. As for Maya apparently actually (without CGI or a stunt double) sitting on top of a moving car that’s tipped over on two wheels, what other famous musician or actor would take that risk (and look so good doing it)? Speaking of risks, I wonder what the odds are that Madonna will have an “accidental” wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl half time show as an attention-grabbing “tribute” to Janet Jackson circa 2004.

  4. M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj are both of full or partial Indian ancestry. M.I.A.’s ancestor came from India about 150 years ago as did Nicki’s but from the NOrth of India.

    Nicki sucks. She needs to go back to Trinidad. She’s a corporate stooge, a sell-out for her people, and has NO talent. She’s a copycat, and an embarrassment to those she represents. She was selected to become famous by corporate-types with a focus group in mind. They have a product life cycle behind Nicki, and they’ve successfully branded this commodity.

    M.I.A. is awesome, and this song of hers sucks.

  5. The M.I.A song is OK. nothing to really get excited about. video is cool, but as a stand alone song to hear on the radio, boring after a few listens.

    as for Maddona, my ears and eyes just got the equivalent of getting hit in the balls by a cannon ball soaked in poo and having my fingers and toes be cut off by a blunt spoon.

  6. Nicki Minaj and her ilk are basically 21st century cotton-pickers. They dance like monkeys when we ask them, they change their names, have no identity, we’ve bribed them to not believe in anything, and we stoke their insecurities so that they re-paint their whole faces and body with a new pigment. We’re exploiting the hell out of Nicki and her people.

  7. “with the kind of slow beat that makes you want to drop the seat back in your ride and do the gangster lean while rocking a keffiya.”

    It irks me, especially the “urban” inflection throughout the write-up.

    Is this an unintended Arab characterization or just careless hipster referencing?

    Maybe I’m just annoyed having read the write up and PatriotsWillWinToday’s sinister racist comments.

  8. I’m so embarrassed to watch M.I.A. look confident. This was way outside her persona. Her personality profile does NOT lend itself to be a faux cheerleader.

    Moreover, her bird-flipping looks very weak and cheap. I feel sad for her to tell you the truth. You can see it in her eyes that she’s very unsure of herself. She probably wanted this to re-kickstart her career.

    M.I.A. can NOT sell her sexuality, be flirty, or be fake. She’s not sexy and she’s not manipulatable like Nicki who’s a 21st century Sally Hemmings. She’s also NOT girly girly. She’s a revolutionaire. She was so out of place.