MIA's Paper Planes: I Was Absent That Day

I actually really enjoy MIA's "Paper Planes", but the first time I heard it, I have to admit that I was really confused. Sometimes she wants to WHAT? Why are there guns going off? Cash registers? Am I supposed to know? I thought that I was listening to an edited version, that she was spewing profanities like a drunken sailor. "WHAT do you want to do, MIA, that's so profane it needs to be bleeped out with obtrusive gun shots?" But then, after hearing several versions, I realize that this was how the song was supposed to sound. Something I'm sure most people realized the first five seconds in hearing the song.

But the gunshots are no less disarming now that I know they're supposed to be there. (And I honestly had no idea what she was saying "murder" because it sounds like "meehhhhhdeeeehhhhhhh".) I don't enjoying hearing loud gun blasts and random ka-chings in my music. Couldn't she have used words there, instead? I think almost any words would sound better, like even if she just repeated the word "bunghole" a bunch of times.

And who are these singing children? Are they the ones who want to *@#$&(@#*$? Are they the ones shooting off these guns, ka-chinging all over the place?

I did a lot of research to find out what this song is really about. I googled the shit out of this song. Fans claim, "This song is so gangsta!" and "This song makes me want to smoke a lot of weed." So maybe I am just not gangsta enough or I do not smoke enough weed.

Either way, the thing that confuses me more than the gunshots, cash registers, and children singers, is the fact that everyone seems to totally get this song except for me. The fact that I even had to look up the meaning of the lyrics is lame-ass.

I actually found this quote from MIA about the song on a message board:

"I was going to get patties at my local and just thinking that really the worst thing that anyone can say [to someone these days] is some shit like: "What I wanna do is come and get your money." People don't really feel like immigrants or refugees contribute to culture in any way. That they're just leeches that suck from whatever. So in the song I say All I wanna do is [sound of gun shooting and reloading, cash register opening] and take your money. I did it in sound effects. It's up to you how you want to interpret. America is so obsessed with money, I'm sure they'll get it."

I still don't. And I definitely didn't get that right away. This song is about immigrants? Am I retarded? It appears everyone else on the message board does get it. I actually sort of feel like an academic trying to translate ebonics, destroying the beauty in the process. This isn't because I'm smart or anything, but just because I'm trying so hard to understand something that I just don't. Something that everyone else gets without even trying. And maybe part of the problem is that I don't wanna boom! boom! ka-ching! take your money, and I am too uncreative to try to relate to it.

I don't want to be too hard on MIA, though. I like the song, and I like it when artists try new things. So God bless MIA, with her guns, and immigrants, and cash registers, and screaming children.