M.I.A.’s “POC That Still a Ryda” Was an Album Collage, Not an *AIM* Single

Identifying the track behind the broad label

The M.I.A. recording highlighted in the June 2, 2016 FunX roundup was “POC That Still a Ryda,” a new video and song posted the previous day. The supplied artist-only keyword can easily suggest a general profile, but the historical lead points to this specific work: a confrontational audiovisual collage created during the unsettled campaign for M.I.A.’s fifth album.

FunX listed the title in its June 2 broadcast recap. Contemporary reports establish that M.I.A. had posted the video on June 1. NME’s notice from that date described it as a new song, while Time’s June 2 report explained its unusual premise: M.I.A. said it mixed material from the album she was then calling Matahdatah.

That description resolves the work’s most persistent ambiguity. “POC That Still a Ryda” was not simply an ordinary lead single subsequently renamed for the album. It was a composite preview—part manifesto, part megamix and part self-contained video—assembled from ideas connected to a record still in flux.

The title has appeared in slightly different forms, including “Poc That Still a Ryda” and, in later catalogue summaries, “Poc Still A Ryda.” Capitalization varies by publication. M.I.A.’s original presentation used “POC THAT STILL A RYDA,” and that is the clearest historical title for the June video.

Release, leak and catalogue status

The recording was publicly posted by M.I.A.; it was not an unauthorized leak. Some of the confusion comes from the artist’s highly public disputes over her album schedule. Weeks later she threatened to leak the delayed album herself, and reports sometimes fold that episode into the June track’s story. The chronology shows they were separate events.

On June 1, the video appeared as an intentional artist publication. On July 11, M.I.A. complained about delays and threatened to leak the album. On July 14, the Los Angeles Times reported the confirmed September release date, describing “Poc That Still a Ryda” as a mixture of numerous album songs. The album, renamed AIM, arrived on September 9 through Interscope and Polydor.

Crucially, the June collage did not appear as a normal track on the final standard album. Apple Music’s official album entry lists 12 tracks and identifies the release as M.I.A.’s own copyright under the original 2016 issue; “POC That Still a Ryda” is absent. The larger digital and physical configurations also centred such tracks as “Borders,” “Go Off,” “Bird Song,” “Freedun,” “Visa” and “Survivor,” not the June collage.

It is therefore inaccurate to call “POC That Still a Ryda” an album track from AIM. It is better classified as a sanctioned standalone audiovisual preview composed from the album’s developing vocabulary. No illicit audio link is needed to establish that history.

Authorship, credits and deliberate instability

Public credit aggregations identify Mathangi Arulpragasam—M.I.A.’s full name—as the writer. An official booklet-style production breakdown for the composite has not remained readily accessible, so claims about additional producers should be made cautiously. AIM itself involved M.I.A. alongside Blaqstarr, Diplo, Skrillex, Richard X, Surkin, the Partysquad and others, but the album’s collective personnel cannot automatically be assigned to every sound in this earlier collage.

That uncertainty is partly built into the piece. Rather than presenting a finalized verse-chorus product with a stable album slot, M.I.A. stitches together rhythmic and verbal fragments. The music lurches through hard electronic percussion, clipped vocal loops and sudden sectional changes. This is a critical description, not an official genre classification, but the discontinuity is unmistakably purposeful: the track behaves like a compressed transmission from several works in progress.

The initials “POC” conventionally read as “person of color,” a meaning reinforced by the song’s treatment of race, borders and national belonging. M.I.A. linked poverty and wealth, movement and restriction, and responded explicitly to controversy around remarks she had made concerning Black Lives Matter. Time’s contemporary account records her inclusion of the movement in the song’s political field.

The title’s “ryda” language also invokes persistence: a speaker who remains mobile, defiant and difficult to contain. That is interpretation, but it fits the video’s core visual vocabulary of vehicles, smoke, flags, urban space and collective presence.

A transitional chapter between Matangi and AIM

M.I.A.’s previous studio album, Matangi, had arrived in 2013 after its own tensions with Interscope. By 2015 she was speaking of an audiovisual project called Matahdatah, launched through the “Matahdatah Scroll 01” film. “Borders,” released later that year, supplied the new era’s most legible statement, pairing images of refugees with an insistent interrogation of fashionable political language.

“POC That Still a Ryda” emerged before that project hardened into AIM. Its composite nature now sounds like evidence of transition: several possible album identities collide inside one video. M.I.A. was simultaneously treating the piece as new work and as an index of work still to come.

The finished album’s documentation clarifies what eventually survived. Universal Music Japan gives September 9, 2016 as AIM’s original release date, while the Official Charts Company records its Interscope issue and UK peak of number 63. The album campaign generated formal singles and authorized catalogue entries. The June work remained outside that structure.

This also explains why describing it as “unreleased” is inadequate. The composite itself was released publicly as a video. What it previewed included material that would take different forms, titles and positions on AIM. It is a released work assembled from an unfinished album, not merely a leaked outtake.

The video’s unstable afterlife

The original artist-posted video was widely embedded by contemporary publications, but surviving YouTube results are dominated by later third-party copies. A page calling itself an “official logo video,” uploaded in 2017 by an unrelated channel, is not the original rights-holder publication. It should not be elevated to official status merely because “official” appears in its title.

For that reason, no YouTube watch URL is attached here. Contemporary journalism such as Stereogum’s June 1 coverage remains useful evidence that M.I.A. posted the visual, but an article embed and a currently authorized rights-holder upload are not the same thing.

June 1, 2016 is the historically relevant publication date because it marks M.I.A.’s own public unveiling. FunX and Time followed on June 2; those dates document reception, not the defining first event.

Why this strange non-single matters

“POC That Still a Ryda” captures M.I.A. at her most resistant to the neat divisions of the record business. It is too structured to dismiss as a teaser, too composite to behave like a conventional single and too publicly launched to call a leak. Its formal instability mirrors the campaign around it: changing album titles, label tension, politically charged imagery and uncertainty over whether AIM would be her last album.

As interpretation, its strongest achievement is that it turns incompletion into meaning. The abrupt seams suggest a political identity that cannot be reduced to a single slogan or market category. Race, migration, money, media controversy and personal mobility arrive as overlapping signals rather than an orderly argument.

The documentary conclusion is simpler. M.I.A. released the video on June 1, 2016. She described it as a mixture of songs associated with her forthcoming record. The final AIM followed in September, but the composite itself was not placed on its track list. Properly identified, it is neither missing single nor bootleg: it is a deliberately public collage from the moment Matahdatah became AIM.