Kala Grade: A-

The lame duck era of the Bush administration was officially ushered in last year when the FBI deemed British rapper and Brooklyn resident Maya Arulpragasam a threat to national security. With sharp-tongued lyrics about Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Palestinian Liberation Organization emanating from such an imposing frame as the wee Maya's, clearly she had to be kept off American soil. Luckily, it didn't stop her from stitching together Kala, a brave, exciting follow-up to the brilliant Arular. \nRushing out of the gate with "power power" on "Bamboo Banga," the first three tracks of Kala are a succession of nearly structureless speaker-shakers with insistent production by M.I.A. and her co-producer Switch. This material has no shot at corporate radio airplay, but it's painfully better than most anything on said stations right now. Kala also refuses to let up in its second half. "XR2" is a terribly busy dance track that will stay stuck in your head for days, and the dreamy "20 Dollar" borrows ever-so-slightly from New Order and the Pixies and ends up 100 percent M.I.A.\nUnlike Arular, Kala gets bogged down by a couple of weak moments, namely the Nelly Furtado-ish throwaway pop of "Jimmy" and the head-nodding filler of "The Turn." For the remaining 40 minutes of its running time, though, Kala is always engaging and never unoriginal. Case and point is the curious "Mango Pickle Down River," with a fuzzy didgeridoo for a bass track and a band of feisty Australian kids freestyle rapping along with Maya. It shouldn't work at all. In fact, it should be horrible. But it's surprisingly addictive, which is a credit to M.I.A.'s instincts as a self-producer.\nM.I.A., despite what the FBI might think, is no threat to America. She is, however, a creative threat to the rest of the rap and world beat community with a pair of albums like Arular and Kala. On "Paper Planes," she gives her political critics more fodder than they can handle with lyrics about fake visas, indiscriminate murder and her own brand of Third World democracy over a sarcastic gunshot beat. It's a knowing middle finger and a calculated move from a woman who could've chosen to go pop, but instead chose to favor worldly experimental music over commercial sales.