Still kinda absorbing the MIA album; it never really seems to sink in, somehow. The drawls, the yelps, they fill out the sound, but do strike me as a kind of facade, the kind of tics one resorts to out of nervousness. Overall the thing which has been really bugging me about it is how, despite it's incredible [nervous] energy, to me it feels hardly ethnic in any way, much less so than the previous album.

For me, there are three central contridictions that put me off the record. The more MIA works with other musicians, the more their individual styles are subsumed and flattened into a fairly one-dimensional sound; despite the global travelling, her sound has actually become less 'ethnic'; and although MIA decries globalisation, this anti-globalisation is her very own global brand.

Following Stelfox's recommendations is usually a good move, and so it is with Kardinall Offishall's mixtape. He has so much fun himself, sometimes rapping, sometimes toasting, but always lording it over the old school beats that much of the time you're simply enjoying his enjoyment. The way he stacks up his styles higgeldy piggedly is peculiarly antithetical to the sleek, sculpted glide of much old school.

Even so, Cypress Hill's "How I Could Kill A Man", versioned on the mixtape, is a kind of guilty pleasure. On the one hand, it gains amazing energy from the juxtaposition of the knowingly rude-boy chorus with the actually positive vibes of the verse; it's the juncture of the De La Soul era jolly sample jigsaw era (deep in the mix you have that old "what does it all mean?" sample) and the restless realism of Mobb Deep, in the first person narratives of the gun talk. On the other hand, there's the sense that it only's so enjoyable because it's wrapped up so tight and appeallingly, so cinematically. Like MIA, the very sillyness of the lyric gives it that devil may care vibe, but also makes you think you actually should care about this kind of amorality.