Ever since she agit-propped her way into our hearts in 2005, Sri Lankan hip-hopper M.I.A. has recorded head-spinning yet startlingly clear reflections of these modern times. On debut disc Arular (her father’s name), she was both political rabblerouser and fashion plate, the worried daughter of a Tamil Tiger freedom fighter making beats in her basement and blowing up online. For 2007’s Kala (her mother’s name), she mixed urban fracas with a Bollywood bent; that album spawned Paper Planes, the utterly addictive hit with the register-and-ricochet hook. That song would earn her a place on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack: movie and musician both entertaining and provocative, crowd-pleasers not afraid to ruffle your hair.

Maya Arulpragasam is 34 now, a new mom with heightened fears of the future. But if you’re expecting a softer, cautious gadfly, you don’t know M.I.A. New album Maya (or /\/\ /\ Y /\ as she typographically insists) is raw, restless, a two-faced battle of nurture and nuclear: “I really love a lot, but I fight the ones that fight me,” she warns on the jarring air-siren snap of Lovalot. On the Afrika Bambaataa pulse of XXXO, she scoffs at the notion that iTunes smash Paper Planes turned her into a hit-seeker: “You want me be [sic] / Somebody who I’m really not.”

Critical boobirds have savaged Maya for its cacophony of found sounds and future shock. But by insisting on buzzsaws and computer blather, government paranoia and the commodification of drunk girls, M.I.A. is taking what we give her and setting it to song, making music out of the rickety din that is 2010. It’s not an easy record, but it’s always alluring, especially when she cuts the aggression and sweetly sings, as on It Takes a Muscle and Space. There’s heart under the hard shell, and just knowing that makes it easy to embrace her.