M.I.7

The London-born, Sri Lanka-raised musician has spent her 20-plus-year career pushing the envelope, be it by way of her radical re-envisioning of so-called “world music”, her activism on behalf of the victims of the Tamil genocide or her anti-5G Ohmni clothing line, which was recently strengthened to protect against 10G. Four years after 2022’s <i>Mata</i>, the innovator and provocateur returns with her seventh album, <i>M.I.7</i>, a gospel record whose seven songs were written in seven locations over seven days (though it’s split into 16 tracks). The narrative is based around the seven trumpets in the Book of Revelation—namely, seven musical warnings sounded by angels that precede a series of increasingly dire apocalyptic events, though the last trumpet announces the return of God’s reign. Between the blazing fires and plagues of locusts erupts the sounds of funk carioca, glitchy club beats,and anarchic schoolyard chants, mostly on the subjects of faith and salvation, though not without the occasional flex. (“Too global to be local/Too real to be loco/I’m letting go, letting God/Lead me to your circle,” she sings on “CIRCLE”.) She recruits Ye’s Sunday Service Choir for a pair of gospel-meets-club bangers (“JESUS”, “CALLING”) and pioneers the genre of evangelical 2-step on “EVERYTHING” before closing things out with 30 minutes of silence, as only M.I.A. can.