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Sep 28, 2016As ever, there is risk run by too many tracks and fatigue sets in while listening to AIM. The idea of taking any one of M.I.A.'s albums and trimming its excess to 12 of the most colorfully resonant offerings is tantalizing to imagine. The same goes for this one.
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Sep 19, 2016Despite the wealth of glowing beats and rhymes, AIM would have benefitted from some unpredictability. Arulpragasam's sound is distinctive, but because she never establishes any kind of progression of ideas or strategically unites her songs around a theme, the album remains repetitive instead of cohesive.
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Sep 14, 2016Skrillex-produced banger Go Off, Blaqstarr-assisted Bird Song and Visa are solid electro-rap party jams that also reference some of her past hits, while low-key dancehall track Foreign Friend and clubby Fly Pirate are among the handful of cuts that get stuck in filler territory.
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Sep 13, 2016AIM may be not the magnum opus that Mathangi Arulpragasam is capable of, but the music world would be a good deal less colourful and quirky without her in it.
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Sep 13, 2016It’s an unpredictable mix of sharp, artful commentary, wildly creative song making and, despite the album’s title, plenty of aimless, indulgent meandering.
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Sep 12, 2016If this is her last album (as she has intimated), a true original bows out on a more equable note.
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Sep 9, 2016AIM finds M.I.A. content to simply make an album, not craft a definitive statement to punctuate her career.
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Sep 8, 2016Some of the backing tracks have novelty appeal--the cartoonish, kazoo-like loop of “Bird Song”, the Qawwali elisions percolating through the Zayn Malik duet “Freedun”--but the most striking work here is her virtually acappella treatment of “Jump In”, with just a sparse beat beneath her rhythmic vocal repetitions.
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Sep 8, 2016Maya Arulpragasam's radical patter is sounding a bit ho-hum ("Borders: what's up with that?" she wonders on her fifth album). But M.I.A.'s skill as a buoyant beat-rider remains intact (the glassily thumping "Visa" turns border crossing into a party), and there are moments on AIM where the political and personal blur evocatively.
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Sep 6, 2016A bleak and wilfully impenetrable album.
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Sep 2, 2016It sounds as if AIM was made exclusively for MIA’s benefit: one final eruption of inventive and sometimes incoherent ideas.
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Sep 13, 2016While she may never have been the most articulate and thoughtful messenger, in AIM, M.I.A. demonstrates her legacy as an artist eager to tackle issues that are volatile and antagonistic. But at this point her music is more potent in theory than execution.
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Sep 19, 2016AIM isn’t nearly as ambitious. It’s just busywork, M.I.A. watching the clock, scanning the news, occupied, but idle.
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Sep 7, 2016Much of the album comes across as lightweight. Too many of the songs sound like sketches, running out of ideas midway through.
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Sep 9, 2016AIM sounds like a field recording made in the middle of a bustling Sri Lankan market: colorful, flavorful, and most of all, noisy. These inescapable Eastern vibes prove to be a blessing, uniting an otherwise fragmented album.
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Sep 15, 2016There are only fleeting glimpses of brilliance on a long-player littered with ideas that never seemed to get past the kernel stage.
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Sep 13, 2016[The] lack of enthusiasm is all too transparent on AIM, and it renders it an absolute failure of a send-off.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 137 out of 167
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Mixed: 16 out of 167
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Negative: 14 out of 167
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Sep 13, 2016
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Sep 14, 2016
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Sep 9, 2016