"Boyz" is a song recorded by artist M.I.A. for her second album Kala (2007). The song was written and produced by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam and Dave "Switch" Taylor and composed in recording sessions held in several countries. A combination of the native styles and influences of these regions and her traditional and electronic musical roots, the song sees M.I.A. mock and simultaneously praise men for various character traits. "Boyz" was one of the first songs that the artist composed for the album and was released as the album's lead single through XL Recordings and Interscope Records on 11 June 2007, in 12-inch single, CD single, digital download and USB flash drive formats. It additionally appeared in an enhanced EP format for its CD single release, and appeared on the How Many Votes Fix Mix EP edition. On 24 April 2007, "Boyz" received its world premiere on the BBC Radio 1 radio station in London.
An uptempo dance song, "Boyz" draws from West Indian soca and Tamil gaana influences, incorporating electronica and club music influences to a 4/4 beat bassline. Displaying elements of worldbeat, its instrumentation consists of urumee drum percussion, trumpets, tambourines, electronic scratches and synths. Its lyrics make reference to male bravado, warlords, motorcycle and dirty track riding and dance moves originating from Jamaica, a country that inspired the song's composition. "Boyz" placed at number nine on the Rolling Stone "100 Best Songs of 2007" list and ranked one of the best songs of the year and the decade by Blender Magazine, NME, Eye Weekly and PopMatters.
The single's accompanying music video was directed by Jay Will Williams and M.I.A., presenting the singer-rapper dancing with several male dancers from Jamaican dance crews surrounded by colourful lo-fi computer-animated graphics, garnering critical acclaim for its subversive nature and triggering a new dance and graphic design revolution in music and videos.
"Boyz" was nominated for the "Viral Woodie" at the 2007 mtvU Woodie Awards. The song made appearances in many television shows and video games since its release, and featured in the film Eat Pray Love. "Boyz" reached number seven on the Canadian Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot Singles Sales chart and number ninety-nine on the Billboard Pop 100. Peaking at number three on the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales, eight places higher than "Galang", "Boyz" gave M.I.A. her first top ten charting single and the record for the first artist of Sri Lankan and Tamil descent to have a top ten charting single in Billboard history and the first to chart on the Billboard Pop 100. "Boyz" was also part of her set list on the Kala Tour (2007) and People vs. Money Tour (2008).
Background
Written and produced by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam and Dave "Switch" Taylor, "Boyz" was the first official single to be released from M.I.A.'s second studio album Kala and one of the first songs composed for the album. During an interview with The Big Issue following the release of debut album Arular, M.I.A. stated that she was looking forward to writing her second album the next year, spending six months in Jamaica and collaborating with high-profile American producers.
The songwriter was unable to gain a long-term work visa to enter the US in 2006 and access the demos she had composed and stored at her New York flat. With the visa denial, she ended up couch-surfing, sleeping at other people's houses in London, as her constant touring on dates in Canada, Argentina and Brazil meant that she no longer had a home in England. She said in an interview "I had to start from scratch with what was around me. The thing is, I get bored easily, and I don't see the point of doing something twice. I made Arular in London; I'd already made a real London album. I just thought, fuck it. If I'm gonna couch-surf in London, I might as well go and couch surf in India or Liberia." M.I.A. opted to record the album at a variety of locations around the world, beginning by travelling to India following the release of "Bucky Done Gun" and the last date of her Arular Tour in Japan in February 2006. She said of her decision "I wanted to get out of people's view: to go and spend time learning about myself and trying to be better. Not really technically better, but I just wanted to be better as a human being. And it's really hard to do that when you make club music."
M.I.A. initially travelled to Chennai, India to meet A. R. Rahman, but found it hard to communicate her ideas to him and the planned musical collaboration did not take place. Rahman did, however, provide M.I.A. with a number of instrumentalist contacts and allow her to use his studio AM Studios to record songs for Kala. The singer was amused during recording the song in India that she needed her brother Sugu to repeat some of her instructions to the instrumentalists for them to play, saying "you have to have somebody who's male, who looks like you, standing next to you like a Siamese twin that's attached at the hip, and they have to be your mouth." Producer Switch, who met the songwriter in Trinidad had later travelled to India purely to engineer more planned sessions, but ultimately became involved in the composition of "Boyz" and other Kala tracks. On this second trip to India, M.I.A. recorded in Kovalam, Tamil Nadu, during which the pair recorded the song and others in a cupboard with a broken monitor due to lack of recording space in the music studio. The singer was able to record the song further in Trinidad again, in Jamaica and later America. She described Trinidad, where she also recorded songs such as "Big Branch" and World Town" for the album, as where the inspiration to put the "meat" of all the songs of Kala together came from, saying "Trinidad is halfway between Jamaica and India. It was nice to see a new Indian approach to life—like Indian people going Jamaican, and the music that comes out is something totally different and weird. There's something that's so approachable about Trinidad and then something that's so dark—people don't really know that. When I was there, it was 50–50, all the time." The song, which epitomises "a world-weary sarcasm that pervades" much of the lyrical content of Kala, began from M.I.A.'s frustration and exhaustion following touring for Arular and her experiences as a woman recording her album.
Composition "Boyz" is an uptempo dance song, incorporating elements of worldbeat, electronica and dancehall music. "Boyz" follows the "nu world" music style that M.I.A. categorises Kala as presenting. M.I.A. has openly discussed her motivations for the song, saying in an interview that "Boyz" was recorded like all of her music, "like a collage" so as not to "fill the same formula" of composition technique amongst her peers, continuing "I don't really do it in a classic sense, like these are the five pieces of happiness dispersed through three and half minutes." Like fellow Kala track "Bird Flu", the song uses urumee drums, a signature instrument of gaana, a folk Tamil genre of music which M.I.A. was familiar with from her time spent living in Sri Lanka and India. Incorporating this style with 22 members of the drumming group The Tapes from Chennai, the songwriter took her material to Trinidad where vocals were recorded and she absorbed influences from the country's love of soca music, a West Indian genre. The song was then worked on further in Brooklyn. The rapper wanted to "create a new way to feel music" with the song by including "ups and downs: the basic chorus, soca for the tempo, and you just fuck around with that."
Tom Breihan of the Village Voice noted that the drums on Kala were "crazy disorienting", departing heavily from those on predecessor Arular. M.I.A highlighted that drums were recorded to introduce a more organic sound to electronic music while remaining digital and futuristic in the song's style, as she felt that the "world was going kind of disco/electro Justicey kind of beat [...] the kind of dance-music revival of the 90s". As with the rest of Kala, M.I.A. and co-composer Switch relied heavily on Logic Pro, a digital audio workstation produced by Apple, and were able to capture vocals and background sounds outside the traditional studio environment, using a microphone and a MacBook Pro. Consisting of urumee drum percussion, trumpets, tambourines, electronic scratches and synths, the song's instrumentation also consists of repetitive pumped-up synthesizers and 4/4 beats. Sukant Chandan writing in the Green Left Weekly noted the percussion on "Boyz" contributed to the "cohesion and continuity throughout" Kala. M.I.A. likened the process of recording the album to "making a big old marble cake with lots of different countries and influences. Then you slice it up and call each slice a song", revealing how she set about achieving some continuum across the album with each song. M.I.A. has noted the resulting "very outdoors" sound as what she aimed for with the composition, despite the drum orchestra being recorded indoors at the Panchathan Record Inn and AM Studios.
The lyrics of "Boyz" display M.I.A.'s response to men following issues being a female in the music industry she faces and expectations in her personal life from her then boyfriend to give up making music and start a family. "Boyz" acknowledges the artist's time in Jamaica, and the singer has described the song as partly a tribute to the country. The song references Jamaican dance moves. As Michael Hubbard of MusicOMH notes, "Boyz" is ostensibly a ditty by a woman about the opposite sex, where the lyrics ask "how many boys are crazy and how many start a war" while Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times said that the punch line of this "call-out to "no money boys" is that they go from being "crazy" and "raw" to starting a war," concluding that "Macho posturing plus poverty equals violence: There's a Third World reality that M.I.A.'s song renders anything but abstract."
Release and live performances
The song was premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show as the "Hottest Record in the World" on 24 April 2007. On 3 June 2007, the high quality radio edit of "Boyz" was leaked to the internet. On 10 June 2007, details of the release were published on M.I.A.'s official website. The track was released on 11 June 2007 by XL Recordings as a limited edition 12-inch maxi single and in USB key format, and as a 12-inch vinyl and enhanced EP CD single (Boyz EP) in the US via Interscope Records on 17 July 2007. The Boyz EP release includes a cappella and instrumental versions of the single, photos, remix parts, the video, and a making of the video part 1 feature. An Akon remix of "Boyz" was leaked at the time of the EP's release. The single was listed for purchase on M.I.A.'s official website music store on 10 August 2007 in physical CD-single, 12" vinyl and also limited edition 512MB USB stick/wristband (released in five different colours) format. The song was released on 18 June 2007 on iTunes and peaked at number nineteen on the UK iTunes Dance Most Downloaded Songs.
During the performance of "Boyz" during the Kala Tour and the /\/\ /\ Y /\ Tour, the songwriter brought male concertgoers onstage to dance with her.
Critical reception