I’m a fence-sitter (as painful as that may be, literally and metaphorically) when it comes to the dread argument about Politics in music. Like most things in life, it all depends on how it’s done. When you forget the primacy of the song, whilst evangelising, you’d be better off – and equally effective, which is to say not very – handing out Socialist Worker Party flyers on a wet and windy afternoon in any given Northern city. When you feel obliged, as M.I.A. (the artist otherwise known as Maya Arulpragasam ) has a number of times, to declare your politics over and above the structure of the song you’re singing, then you need to be judged not on aesthetic grounds but according to ideology, and precious few songwriters have ever been accused of effecting social change through their MTV delivered tracts.

But, on the other hand, I take exception to the rule that great tunes need to have a lyrical content equal-to-but-not-exceeding ‘Sugar, honey-honey, you are my candy girl, and you’ve got me wanting you’. It’s a question of starting points – and M.I.A.’s starting point on Boyz is revolutionary, first and foremost in the sounds used. Listen to the opening beats, and tell me you’ve heard something like it before, and I’ll call you a liar. THe closest touchpoint you can have for it is her previous work, on her debut album Arular‘s Bucky done gun, but this is a huge leap forward. Before M.I.A. was undoubtedly interesting, now she’s indispensable.

The musical force behind the song is a mash-up of rythms and musical cultures. At the forefront is the urumi drum, a traditional drum played (usually by untouchables) in the Tamil Nadu state of India and in Sri Lanka, from where M.I.A’s family emigrated to London. Mix that in with some Trinidad ‘Soca’ style, and you have a world-beat that’s less to do with the worthy sounds of Manu Chao & co. and more to do with calypso clashing with, well, the clash.

So, on a musical level, this is in itself political – without bragging about it. It calls into question the rythmic and melodic mores that dominate the global music industry – where the only ‘third-world’ nation allowed to break out of ‘world music’ boredom is Jamaica with its reggae and dancehall cultures. In a culture where innovative sampling simply means finding a ’70s tune that had middling success first time around, and rapping over it, M.I.A.’s sampling of musical cultures is art.

The lyrics take on a stock-standard hip-hop call out and turn it on it’s head.

“HOw many boyz are crazy
How many boyz are raw
HOw many boyz are rowdy
How many start a war”

Brash, sexy, and not just a little bit sexist – but, when the oppressed turns on the oppressed and makes them dance at the same time, then, to recall Lenon’s revolution, you can count me in.

Rolling Stone nominated this #9 in their list of the 100 top songs of 2007 – an oversight, considering they had the likes of Rhianna and her vapid bubblegum Umbrella at #3 (not that it’s a bad song, when done right – check out the Biffy Clyro version that’s doing the rounds). Nobody, for this monkey, has done anything as remotely innovative or catchy as this in a long time – or political, for that matter.