M.I.A.

I don’t want to hype, but Diplo’s remix of “Amazon” is the achievement of our times, a rope-skip banger that makes errrebody in the club go batshit sideways, and after coughing up Arular — the full-length that remix ain’t on — most civilizations would lie down and die, ’cause there’s no room in heaven for anything M.I.A.’s not saying. Our Sri Lankan MC rides the apocalypse like the bull at Gilley’s, talking guns and revolution in a skittery polyglot, chanting with militant joy from where the schoolyard meets the refugee camp, bragging that, like the PLO, she don’t surrendo. Into her homemade (but producer-beefed) beats, she’s packed everything that’s ever happened — from Masada to Rwanda, from rock-steady to the teaches of Peaches — and like the globe today, the whole is just one element shy of blowing. It’s old-school electro-funk, a no-nation vision from 15 years down the line. God knows where hip-hop goes after this, but until this world flames out in March, I’ll bump her everywhere, from truck to john to gym to dreams.