M.I.A.: The Billboard

M.I.A. has always had a high press profile, but in the past most of the attention was focused on her music, which between "Kala" and her 2005 debut, "Arular," has notched combined sales of more than 719,000 albums, according to Nielsen SoundScan; "Paper Planes," her breakthrough single off "Kala," reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, earned a 2009 Grammy Award nomination for record of the year and has sold 3 million copies. "In one way it's not their fault that they don't have music to write about," she says of the countless pop-culture pundits who've weighed in on Trufflegate, "because I haven't put a record out."

Until now, that is: Due July 13 in the United States on the singer's own N.E.E.T. Recordings imprint through Interscope, "/\/\ /\ Y /\" is sure to steer at least part of the conversation regarding M.I.A. back to her music. It's at once her most accessible and most experimental album, as defined by the sweet synth-pop melodies of "XXXO" as by the juddering electro-punk beats of "Born Free." In "Tell Me Why," over a sample of a recording by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, M.I.A. flexes a disarmingly plaintive singing voice, while "Steppin Up" finds her warning all comers, "I run this fucking club."

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