How do you follow up a breakout hit that managed to mix political protest with dancefloor-ready art pop?

If you’re M.I.A., you turn up the dial on every element of your debut and set those suckers to eleven.

Kala uses much of the Arular formula as a playbook. An aural assault of drum machines and samples provide an accompaniment to Maya’s distinct voice as she holds up the plight of the marginalized and undervalued. She doesn’t just use Kala to use her voice to advocate for them—a few times across this record, she hands the mic to those people to speak for themselves (specifically the Wilcannia Mob,  a rap group comprised of indigenous Australian children, which appears on “Mango Pickle Down River“). As she says, “I put people on the map who never seen a map.”

But Arular’s sonic template is just a launching board here. Kala augments her unique drum machine work with world instruments, synthesizers, and samples. The result is a musical landscape that is just as catchy as it is chaotic. “Bird Flu” and “Boyz” feature chopped and warped samples and animal noises to create tunes that would feel appropriate for a nightclub. But at the same time, Kala is also much more melodic than its predecessor, especially on tracks like the lovelorn “Jimmy” and “Paper Planes,” which became a massive hit.

Maya melds her diverse musical fluency all across Kala. The blending of hip hop and world music would seem revelatory enough, but the disc also finds her flexing her punk cred. “Bamboo Banga” borrows the opening verse of “Roadrunner” by Modern Lovers. The creeping, grimy “20 Dollar” uses the verse of the Pixies’ seminal hit “Where Is My Mind.” “Paper Planes” samples a Clash deep cut called “Straight To Hell.”

On paper, none of it feels like it would work. A record that tells of personal and political struggles over a blend of hip hop, gaana, punk, and art pop sounds like it would be a bloated and convoluted mess. But Kala doesn’t just work—it’s a bonafide masterpiece.