One article in the Village Voice makes for good publicity. Two simultaneous articles means the there's enough buzz on the street to merit a higher word count. Three? It's a mark reached by very few musicians, and it takes a combination of music aptitude, political importance and pop culture fascination to get three articles in the same issue. (Courtney Love scored the hat trick not long ago, but nobody else comes to mind.)

M.I.A. has three pieces--all written by Robert Christgau--in yesterday's Village Voice. In the print version, the three articles took up an entire page.

One, titled "Burning Bright," questions her political image that has been a matter of much debate, implying that its been mishandled and misinterpreted by the press. (C'mon, her image has been handcrafted with meticulous care. Don't underestimate the powers of the press agent and the manager. Even if it's a bullshit image, it's sparked enough debate to get three articles in the Village Voice. Job well done, don't you think?) He calls into question just how much she actually supports the Tamil Tigers, a revolutionary group in her native Sri Lanka of which her father was a member.

Another is a review of her album, Arular, which will be released by Interscope (as reported yesterday by Billboard.com). Christgau was serenaded by the mild references to violence, and says "not for a moment does the violence seem vindictive, sadistic, or pleasurable." Maybe so, but M.I.A. is capitalizing on--and encouraging--the public's view of her a revolutionary figure, whether or not it's contrived.

The third, "M.I.A. in Her Own Words," is a series of quotations that, I assume, were presented to present M.I.A. as some kind of political commentator, and to use her own words to support Christgau's research into her political nature. "If I represent anything, it's what it's like to be a civilian caught up in a war," reads on quote.

"M.I.A. has no consistent political program and it's foolish to expect one of her," he wrote. OK, I'm down with that. I can accept that she's doing nothing more than reflecting upon her life as a refugee from a war-torn country. I know she's an art student, not a Tiger. So let's stop talking politics and enjoy her music--and cover her career is if she were an art student, not a political figure.