Mathangi Arulpragasam leapt into everyone’s consciousness after the huge success of her Mercury Prize nominated debut release Arular in 2005. Delivering scathing social criticisms under the guise of club-friendly singles and adopting the moniker M.I.A. (Missing In Action), she apparently achieved the impossible by giving dance music a radical agenda.

For her latest album Matangi, the artist has taken this radicalism further still by taking the same route as artists such as Radiohead and Eminem, bringing out her fourth LP on the internet to allow listeners to stream it for free.

As with her earlier music, M.I.A. mixes dubstep rhythms and riffs more suited to a club dance-floor with samples that evoke her own upbringing in Sri Lanka. However, unlike in Arular, the limitless mash-up of influences that she has collated for her latest effort seem more incongruous than inspired.

This is in stark contrast to the singles taken from her first two albums, which were unique and uplifting. When she began her music career in 2003, the rapper’s decision to mix Sri Lankan influences with more mainstream styles brought world music to a wider audience, even before Danny Boyle made it near-impossible not to associate ‘Paper Planes’ with his Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

The eccentricity and artistic independence that have made M.I.A. so popular seems to backfire on Matangi. Although ‘Exodus’ and ‘Matangi’ stand out, the latter with a haunting and memorable refrain, all of the tracks eventually melt into indistinctive, repetitive white noise.

The songs on her other releases are all individually recognisable, however her nonsensical lyrics quickly become frustrating on this album. For somebody who has condemned contemporary performers in the past, claiming that “every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing,” she appears to say very little on her latest release.

While M.I.A.’s music normally reveals esoteric influences and an instantly recognisable sound, Matangi only seems to consist of the soundtrack to a club night or an achingly cool film. Although the title of one of the songs on the album is the hopeful ‘Y.A.L.A’. (You Always Live Again), it seems as if all M.I.A. has done to update her output is to add a persistent dance rhythm, instead of rejuvenating it with the originality of her other works.

The rapper whose music has seduced Danny Boyle, BRIT awards judges and the general public seems to have gone AWOL: can we have the real M.I.A. back please?