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M.I.A.

Arular

The fierce, feline grace of Maya Arulpragasam’s unusual voice makes her marriage of Jamaican dance hall, Brit-accented hip-hop and flavors from her homeland so appealing. Her lyrical images are just beneath the hook-packed veneer, but it’s the wordless trilling and acrobatic uh-huh’s, ya-ya’s and hey-hey’s she uses to punctuate the beats that drive these tracks straight into the pleasure center of the brain.

More Top Picks 4

Best track: “Dakota.”

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Edited by Curt Wagner ([email protected]) and Michael Morgan ([email protected])