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Arular is the debut studio album by English recording artist M.I.A. It was released on 22 March 2005 in the United States, and one month later in the United Kingdom, with a slightly different track listing. In 2004, the album's release was preceded by two singles and a mixtape. M.I.A. wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the album, while collaborators included Justine Frischmann, Switch, Diplo, Richard X, Ant Whiting and Greg "Wizard" Fleming.
The album's title is the political code name used by her father, Arul Pragasam, during his involvement with Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, and themes of conflict and revolution feature heavily in the lyrics and artwork. Musically, the album incorporates styles that range from hip hop and electroclash to dancehall, baile funk, and punk rock. M.I.A. created the basic backing tracks using a Roland MC-505 music sequencer/drum machine given to her by long-time friend Frischmann.
Arular was lauded by critics for its blending of styles and integration of political lyrics into Dance music. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2005 and was included in the 2005 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Although it only reached number 98 on the UK Albums Chart and number 190 on the US Billboard 200, several publications named it as one of the best albums of the year. By early 2010, the album had sold 190,000 copies in the US, Arular spawned the singles "Sunshowers", "Bucky Done Gun" and "Galang", which was released twice.
M.I.A. secured a record deal with XL Recordings after Frischmann's manager overheard the demo. M.I.A. began work on the album by composing lyrics and melodies, and she programmed at home on the drum machine. Having produced rough tracks via trial and error, she honed the finished songs in collaboration with other writer-producers. Through these collaborations, she sought to produce a diverse style and "drag her out of their boxes, musically".
DJ Diplo introduced elements of Brazilian funk carioca to "Bucky Done Gun". Fellow composer-producer Richard X worked on the track "Hombre", which featured a drum pattern created from the sounds made by toys that M.I.A. had bought in India, augmented with sounds produced by objects such as pens and mobile phones. Steve Mackey and Ross Orton, known professionally as Cavemen, worked on "Galang", which M.I.A. had initially produced with her 505 and a basic four-track tape recorder. Working with Cavemen in a professional studio, she added a bass line and new vocals to give the song "a more analogue sound" than was possible with the 505. The track was co-written by Frischmann, whose input M.I.A. described as "refreshing". She initially hoped to feature guest vocalists on the album, but was unable due to budget constraints and other artists' unfamiliarity with her work. She chose to perform all the vocals herself, saying, "I just quietly got on with it ... I didn't wanna convince anyone it was good. I felt it was much better to prove that I could be an individual."
The album is influenced by music that M.I.A. listened to as a child in London, including hip hop, dancehall, and punk rock. She cited as particular influences Eric B. & Rakim, Public Enemy, and London Posse, whom she described as "the best of British hip hop". Her work on the album drew on the punk music of The Clash and music from genres such as Britpop and electroclash, to which she was exposed during her time studying at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Living in West London, she met many musicians who to her defined an era of British music that was "actually credible". In a 2008 interview, she elaborated on the importance of the west London punk subculture, citing acts such as The Slits, The Clash, and Don Letts; she claimed that Bow Wow Wow and Malcolm McLaren had a similar cultural impact in England to that of Public Enemy in America.
Before the album's release, M.I.A. said that audiences found it hard to dance to political songs. This made her keen to produce music that sounded like pop but addressed important issues. "Sunshowers", with its lyrical references to snipers, murder and the PLO, was written in response to the Tamil Tigers being considered terrorists in some quarters. She said, "you can't separate the world into two parts like that, good and evil. America has successfully tied all these pockets of independence struggles, revolutions and extremists into one big notion of terrorism." The lyrics caused controversy; MTV censored the sounds of gunshots in the song and MTV US refused to broadcast the video unless a disclaimer that disavowed the lyrics was added. The BBC described the lyrics as "always fluid and never too rhetorical" and sounding like "snatches of overheard conversation". The songs deal with topics ranging from sex to drug dealing.
Musically, the album incorporates elements of baile funk, grime, hip hop, and ragga. Peter Shapiro, writing in The Times, summed up the album's musical influences as "anything as long as it has a beat". Some tracks drew on Tamil film music, which M.I.A. listened to while growing up. Shapiro described her music as a "multi-genre pile-up" and likened it to her graphic art, calling it "vivid, gaudy, lo-fi music and deceptively candyfloss". In a 2005 interview, when asked about the difficulty in categorising her sound, M.I.A. explained, "Influences are crossing over into each other's puddles. I just accept where I'm at, I accept where the world is at and I accept how we receive and digest information. I get that somebody in Tokyo is on the internet instant messaging, and someone in the favelas is on the internet. Everybody seems to know a little bit about everything and that's how we process information now. This just reflects that."
In December 2004, M.I.A. independently released a mixtape titled Piracy Funds Terrorism, produced by M.I.A. and Diplo, as a "teaser" for the album. The release featured rough mixes of tracks from Arular mashed up with songs by other artists, and was promoted by word-of-mouth. In early 2005, after the release of Arular, an extensive collection of fan-made remixes of M.I.A.'s work was uploaded, expanded and made available as an "online mixtape" on XL's official website, under the banner Online Piracy Funds Terrorism. M.I.A. toured extensively during 2005 to promote the album. The Arular Tour included concerts in North America supporting LCD Soundsystem and appearances at music festivals in Europe, Japan and South America. In November 2005, she appeared as the support act at a number of dates on Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers Tour.
Julianne Shepherd of Spin appreciated the album's fusion of "hip hop's cockiness with dancehall's shimmy and the cheap and noisy aesthetics of punk rock" and claimed that Arular would be regarded as the best political album of the year. Adam Webb, writing for Yahoo! Music, described the album's style as "professionally amateurish" and M.I.A.'s approach as "scattergun", but said that she "effortlessly appropriates the music of various cultures and filters them through the most elementary equipment". He said, "dancehall is the primary influence, but also one of many seismic collisions with several other genres."
In his review for Stylus Magazine, Josh Timmermann described Arular as "a swaggering, spitting, utterly contemporary album" and went on to say, "We've not heard its like before." Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield found Arular "weird, playful, unclassifiable, sexy, brilliantly addictive". Sasha Frere-Jones, writing in The New Yorker, described the album as "genuine world music", based on "the weaving of the political into the fabric of what are still, basically, dance music". Other reviewers were not as complimentary. Pastes Jeff Leven said that the album, although strong, was not as "mindblowing" as many critics were saying. Q characterised the album as "style mag-cool pop-rap" and claimed that it lacked the substance suggested by M.I.A.'s decision to name it after her father.
Arular was nominated for the Mercury Prize and the Shortlist Music Prize, and was named as the best album of the year by Stylus Magazine. The album placed second in two major critics' polls, The Village Voices 33rd annual Pazz & Jop poll for the Best Album of 2005 and The Wires annual critics' poll for Record of the Year. The Washington City Paper chose it as the second best album of the year, and Pitchfork and Slant Magazine named Arular the fourth best of 2005. The Observer listed it as one of the year's five best albums.
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