Coalition of the Chillin'

568. BEWARE, Panjabi MC ft/Jay-Z
Produced and written by Janjua, Larson, Phillips, and Rai
Sequence 8012 2003 Did not make pop charts.

569. GALANG, M.I.A.
Produced by South Rakkas Crew, written by Maya Arulpragasm, Justine Frischmann, Steve Mackey, & Ross Orton
XL 41199 2003 Did not make pop charts

Bhangra rules! Proof that pop culture is always more complicated than it looks.

2003 was the height of popular American anti-Arabism, anti-Asianism and (let's be honest) anti-"Orientalism." Everything, anything, and anyone south of Russia and west of Laos was suspect in the eyes of most U.S. citizens, so it only makes sense that Sikh backing tracks were the rage that year not in the U.S. but in Tony Blair's Britain. Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” had had a slightly similar sound two years before, but in these two cases the toasters had actual roots in the Indian subcontinent. Hip-hop has been top-down global since the late 1980s, but this was one of the few moments when what might formerly have been a local sound traveled into the pop mainstream in a Western country (and the pop underground in the U.S.), rather than having the corporate voice of hip-hop move in the other direction.
The only analogous moment I can think of was thirty years before that, when Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” broke wide in the states.

Both Panjabi MC and MIA are British, of course, no matter what their ancestry. Without the transplanted and transformed cultures of its former colonies and imperial possessions, it’s hard to imagine where British culture would have been in the last quarter century. But what about m’boy HOVA? You could just chalk it up to cultural imperialism and repackaging, to the exoticism of The Other that US culture was trying to seduce/contain in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, etc., but listen to the American's superimposed flow here. There is at least a pretence to self-conscious global politics. Jay's no Chomsky, but the last time I checked MC Noam's street cred was still sorely lacking.

Dissent was pretty rare stateside in the Shock and Y'Awl world of 2003. In a time and a place where a Sikh was pulled from a train and beaten because idiots thought he was a Muslim, maybe chillin to Panjabi MC was a political act. At least, it was a start. And no, now that you mention it, it don’t stop.