Arular (studio album) by M.I.A.
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M.I.A. bestography
Arular is ranked 2nd best out of 8 albums by M.I.A. on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by M.I.A. is Kala which is ranked number 851 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 2,162.
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Arular track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 80 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Top-rated track as rated by BestEverAlbums.com members.
Arular rankings
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Arular collection
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Arular ratings

where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this album. | Show all 264 ratings for this album.
Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
80/100 ![]() | 03/22/2023 22:54 | PapaShiz86 | ![]() | 79/100 |
90/100 ![]() | 03/10/2023 19:48 | grover279 | ![]() | 89/100 |
50/100 ![]() | 03/09/2023 15:31 | ![]() | ![]() | 60/100 |
40/100 ![]() | 03/06/2023 03:43 | ![]() | ![]() | 71/100 |
55/100 ![]() | 02/17/2023 18:17 | ![]() | ![]() | 59/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album is rated in the top 12% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 75.0/100, a mean average of 73.6/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 75.1/100. The standard deviation for this album is 17.6.
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Arular favourites
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Arular comments
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Really like the vibe and attitude, but it becomes hard to ignore the repetitiveness.

There are two sides to this album.
The production that sounds like how the cover looks; a messed up mesh (meshed up?) of Indian folk and electroclash (one of the best things this decade has brought) on a mostly dancehall rhythm.
The seductive, rapped vocals that inspired many non-black women to rap. Who knows, maybe Robyn heard 'Sunshowers' or 'Galang' in 2004, but in any case M.I.A. was first and I don't like to believe in coincidences. They might both be inspired by Peaches, but her sound comes closer to punk, but as we have seen in the '80s too, the line between punk and hip hop are easily blurred. Anyway, when you zoom in on one concept in music and try to find its origin, you often find yourself going too far back to something that doesn't slightly sound alike, and one should give credit to the person that got the total picture right: "it's not about who did it first, but about who did it right". Weird place for a Drake lyric, but it's true.

This has seriously grown on me...
An utterly explosive debut blending culture and politics into its oddball hip-hop tapestry. I absolutely adore everything about "Arular".
Explosive debut from M.I.A. Completely fresh and eclectic whilst being accessible; it's completely its own thing and remains one of the best albums of 2005 & the best from her career (although that may be an unpopular opinion).
Loved it the first time I heard it. Great dance record, lots of attitude. Couldn't care less about whatever the controversy surrounding it is about.
People not getting it. Loud, brash, hard, good tunes and not like much else. Underrated imo but does seem to polarise opinion and that's no bad thing. Telefunker, I must see your BEA...suspect it will be entertaining.

This album gets a lot of backlash, but hey, i didn't like it at first either. I guess its just got some sick beats, and a great vibe. Not a fan of the rest of her stuff but her attitude on this one is pretty sick in my book

Radiohead makes a very original album just to experiment with new sounds and people say it's groundbreaking, but when M.I.A. does it, she's trying too hard and it's originality for the sake of originality. Well, I liked Arular. It displayed a completely fresh sound, and I congratulate M.I.A. for that. That's all there is to say.

It was nice, funny and hypey... it lasted for 3 months in my playlist. It was fun.
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