Kala by M.I.A.

Kala, M.I.A.'s second album, dropped on XL on 8 August 2007, and it's named for her mother, whose hard-fought life runs through the whole thing. The plan was to cut most of it with Timbaland in America, but she couldn't land a long-term US work visa, so she took the operation global instead, recording in India, Angola, Trinidad, Liberia, Jamaica and Australia with Switch as her main partner and Logic Pro as the portable studio. Timbaland and Diplo still turn up, along with Afrikan Boy and the Wilcannia Mob.

The result is a riotous passport of a record: Bollywood and Tamil film samples, funk carioca beats, African folk and sounds grabbed well outside any studio, all bent around songs about immigration, poverty and who profits from both. "Paper Planes" was the breakout, landing a Record of the Year nomination at the Grammys, and Robert Christgau went so far as to name Kala his favourite album of the century.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.