The Sociological Ear

Of course I watched the Superbowl half time show yesterday. How could I not? I’m no fan of Madonna (for what I’d like to think are pretty legitimate reasons), but the promise of Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. sashaying their stuff on the same larger-than-life stage was enough for me to tune in.

Thankfully, I did get what I expected and was delighted in the imagery and production of the show (I can say what I will about Madonna but at least she has wonderful taste in art direction), and was even moderately surprised when M.I.A. managed to upstage Madonna for the second time in three days by flipping off nearly all of America. A strange sort of glee occurred in me at that point, because—to paraphrase a person on my dashboard—there’s just something so rich and wicked about artists of color displaying non-acceptable, pre-approved behavior that is regularly set in place for artists of color (there’s also something to be said for how “unladylike” the gesture was, but since that is not the objective of this post, I’ll digress.) 

As I reveled in the aftermath of the gesture, my glee turned into a combination of annoyance and confusion. Watching the reactions of fans of non-fans alike made me wonder what exactly people expected from M.I.A and, by extension, artists who operated within her genre and on her level of fame. It’s no real secret that Maya has a strange association with popularity in America; although she does not actively seek mainstream success, it has happened to her with the rise of 2007’s Paper Planes. But because her later singles did not attain the same level of success, Maya has never really had the chance to formally introduce herself or even explain herself as a musical artist to the mainstream public, an opportunity usually missed by regular mainstream “one-hit wonders.”

For a lot of people, the Superbowl half time performance was a re-introduction to the artist M.I.A., and some people were able to use “Paper Planes” as their base idea of what to expect. In “Paper Planes,” Maya is an immigrant hustler, selling sandwiches and collecting money; she is cool, determined, and with little worry. She is, more importantly, the antithesis of the mainstream female pop artist in both appearance and in demeanor.

That has, in actuality, been M.I.A.’s schtick for some in her entire career. She is not the (socially acceptable) beautiful, popular female artist and she does not operate in the mainstream. She is the “opposite” of Britney Spears or of fellow collaborator, Madonna. I suppose that if you view M.I.A. on these terms, it’s very easy to point the accusing finger of “selling out.” If you believe that M.I.A. is meant only for the underground and does not operate as a pop artist, it would be very difficult to imagine the idea of her working so closely with someone like Madonna.

This would, in effect, explain the myriad of posts I saw of people sighing in relief when Maya flipped the bird. To the “selling out” crowd, that middle digit was a sign: Maya was still tough, still underground, still cool to like and to enjoy, and that Madonna had not brainwashed her into mainstream success. For some, Maya had effectively saved her street cred by flipping off the world.

I’ll be real: that kind of shit perplexes me. I don’t really view Maya on any of the terms listed above—I can recognize, above all things, that she is a pop artist. I realize that her image can sometimes be put on but is also largely an extent of her experiences as a woman of color and a non-American. The glee I felt in watching Maya “misbehave” had to do more with the fact that she was a woman of color misbehaving, not because I was concerned for her street cred in the underground world.

The entire concept of “selling out” is a strange one; it can be used to effectively police the ventures and interests of a white artist (by possibly affecting their fanbase), but it is a limiting, almost arbitrary concept on the careers of artists of color. In Maya’s case, “selling out” is almost too ridiculous to entertain. The more I thought of the relief people displayed in the two second clip of Maya flipping the bird, the more I realized how much people wanted and expected Maya to stay underground as some kind of weird, super-cool collective secret.

But why Maya? And how does “selling out” affect artists of color?

Urban Dictionary has many different (somewhat bitter) definitions for selling out, but I want to work with this one:

selling out: 

To compromise one’s values and/or aristic vision in order to gain fame and/or monetary profit. Commonplace in today’s musical society. It is rare to find a successful musical artist who has not “sold out”, however, this is not to say that they do not exist.

By operating under this definition alone (which seems to largely summarize what people mean when they accuse a particular artist of “selling out”) it’s understandable that some of Maya’s fans may have been pulling teeth at the thought of her performing at the Superbowl. The Superbowl is a huge, annual, American production—which can seem to largely conflict with certain comments Maya has made about America, its consumerism and traditions. She collaborated with and performed on Madonna’s single “Gimme All Your Luvin’”, a largely pop record (which is Madonna’s forte, usually). In the video for said record, she has very little lines and even less creative authority, which is what happens when you feature for another artist. Any fan who does not understand the way collaborations, American mainstream music, or musical artists work would probably look at all of these things and become alarmed.

But in the case of Maya, “selling out” goes largely beyond pop hits or Superbowl performances. Maya has spent a large amount of her career discussing things that are important to her as a woman of color and non-American: racism, sexism, pride in her home country of Sri Lanka and her Tamil descent, American exceptonalism, etc. Not only have people come to expect that from her work, but they expect to her to shy away from anything that seems to combat these presentation of her, including largely popular, mainstream things. In doing this, such fans acknowledge that none of the things discussed in her work are considered acceptable subjects in popular in mainstream music and are easily able to define the limits of Maya’s career and what can be construed as her selling out (basically, when she does not discuss any of these things.)

Hence, the outrage at GMAYL, where Maya discusses none of these things to the background of a poppy 808s and drum machines (ironically, these are things Maya uses for her own work.) Maya’s regular swagger and bravado (another thing that sets her apart from mainstream female artists) is also suspended, and she “sells out” even more by dressing up all American outfits (cheerleader + Marilyn Monroe costume, complete with blonde hair.) Maya is not fulfilling the role of the cool, foreign underground artist; thus she is not staying true to her roots. She is not discussing wars that people do not know or talk about or raving against terrorism, so she is giving up her artistic vision.

There’s also the problem of questioning Maya’s creative choices, especially as to why she chose to work with Madonna in the first place. It seems that it is unlikely that Maya could have chosen to work with Madonna for personal, sentimental reasons; instead, she is clearly only working with Madonna for fame. If the rage at Maya’s collaboration with Madonna is a flame, the “sell out” crowd’s obsession with fame-mongering would be the candle. In order to “sell out,” an undeground artist cannot collaborate with a mainstream artist for their own reasons; one must be obsessed with occurring fame to the point of losing themselves and dismantling their own careers. 

For me, Maya’s motivation is really a moot point. Whether or not she was aiming for fame is not a concern of mine because I understand that she, like any musical artist, may like the idea of being popular, having sold out American shows and the like. Because people sometimes view Maya’s entire career as one huge political act or artistic experiment, they forget that she is a musical artist, that plays shows, and sells records/merch/etc. As a musician/artist, mainstream success can be a motivation or a desire, but isn’t always. Either is okay, as far as I’m concerned —Maya wanting to be mainstream does not cancel out her music, objective or anything else already set up in her career. Mainstream success for Maya does not equal insincerity, or a lack of authenticity/realness.

In some ways, the way “sell out” fans view Maya (as the cool, Foreign artist) can be so perplexing because the concept of “selling out” doesn’t apply to genres or communities that are largely comprised of people of color. In rap or hip-hop, for instance, “selling out” doesn’t exist in the same way that it does in rock or underground genre. Mainstream rappers can not “sell out,” but they can become “soft” or act “hard.” Mainstream hip-hop artists can deviate from “appropriate” subjects and be labeled something insulting, but they are not accused of “selling out.” Yet in underground spaces or in genres that are largely dominated by white people, “selling out” is a concept that stands and is largely applied to every artist in some way, even artists of color that operate within the genre but who have differences in creative vision or other ideas that do not largely fit into what their fanbase expects or wants them to be.