It’s fairly easy, and indeed tempting, to write M.I.A. off as a faux-radical who relies on the borrowed aesthetics of revolution to sell records. But that superficial reading belies her truest political work: her commitment to self and the exploration of identity in a world and industry that is more comfortable with easily digestible predetermined narratives, particularly when it comes to racialized people.

Up until very recently, I'd recount my online experiences with some degree of shame or sheepishness, but in this apocalyptic year of 2012, that embarrassment is beginning to fall by the wayside. I've been having more and more conversations with people grappling with what is gained and lost by how some of our most meaningful musical discoveries-- not to mention life experiences-- have happened in front of, or facilitated by, screens. We're starting to come to terms with the fact that modern life is a constant, awkward/elegant oscillation between the digital and physical, faces and FaceTime, and we're starting to hear music that reflects this reality, the beginnings of a new ordinary.

On ‘mediated experiences’ and the ways that different types and generations of people experience them.