M.I.A, like Nicki Minaj, does it best when she's exposing her wacky, playground cheekiness. The very schizophrenic /\/\ /\ Y /\ dropped last year, dovetailing with her very embarrassing NYT profile, and it was around this time that a popular consensus formed that we were Done with Maya Arulpragasam. That said, the internet rang the New Year in with a collective party whoop at the showing of her free Vicki Leekx mixtape (cut after the jump if you haven't heard it yet, tsk tsk), and the PR recovery machine has not stopped spitting out bangers since. "Zig Zag," a /\/\ /\ Y /\ castoff, is just the sort of hiccupy, sing-song, nonsense insult anthem that made Arular and Kala contemporary classics. The jumprope song of a chorus, "You kiss me and I kiss you back, you zig me and I'll zag you back, you tic me and I'll tac you back," is just the kind of high-powered rhythmic pop that we were expecting from /\/\ /\ Y /\ . Were Barthes on the scene today, he might cite "Zig Zag" as an alarming incentive to explore the counterfactual--which would constitue, in this case, the realm of possibilities that were closed when /\/\ /\ Y /\ 's tracks were chosen--all the other possible tracks comprise a shadow world, a counterfactual that is now coming to light, hit-by-hit. The album we wanted is arriving piecemeal every month--methinks 2011 is looking up, folks.
Hwhat a bitch--and that's the way we love her best.
Edit: According to an anonymous commenter, "Zig Zag is a record that was made back in '03 and was cast out because Maya didn't really favour it. It was never made for /\/\ /\ Y /\."
