wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the album, while collaborators included Justine Frischmann, Switch, Diplo, Richard X, Ant Whiting and Greg "Wizard" Fleming.

The album's title is the political code name used by her father, Arul Pragasam, during his involvement with Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, and themes of conflict and revolution feature heavily in the lyrics and artwork.

Musically, the album incorporates styles that range from hip hop and electroclash to dancehall, baile funk, and punk.

By early 2010, the album had sold 190,000 copies in the US, Arular spawned the singles "Sunshowers", "Bucky Done Gun" and "Galang", which was released twice.

While filming a documentary on Elastica's 2001 tour of the US, she was introduced to the Roland MC-505 sequencer/drum machine by electroclash artist Peaches, whose minimalistic approach to music inspired her.

She found Peaches' decision to perform without additional instrumentation to be brave and liberating and felt that it emphasised the artist.

[4][5] Returning to London, she unexpectedly gained access to a 505 owned by her friend, former Elastica singer Justine Frischmann.

[11] Fellow composer-producer Richard X worked on the track "Hombre", which featured a drum pattern created from the sounds made by toys that M.I.A.

Working with Cavemen in a professional studio, she added a bass line and new vocals to give the song "a more analogue sound" than was possible with the 505.

[10] She initially hoped to feature guest vocalists on the album, but was unable due to budget constraints and other artists' unfamiliarity with her work.

[8][13] "In Sri Lankan, arular means 'enlightenment from the sunshine' or something", she remarked, "but a friend pointed out that it was a pun in English – 'a ruler' – which is funny because he is a politician.

If he really was an egomaniac, he'd be looking himself up and he'd get this pop album stealing his name that would turn out to be me, and he'd have to get in touch",[14] a prediction which ultimately came true.

[19] In a 2008 interview, she elaborated on the importance of the west London punk scene, citing acts such as The Slits, The Clash, and Don Letts; she claimed that Bow Wow Wow and Malcolm McLaren had a similar cultural impact in England to that of Public Enemy in America.

It works on a few basic human principles, in terms of what stimulation buttons to push...It had content and struggle behind it... and because I was able to adapt to it, hip-hop gave me a home, an identity.

[21] "Sunshowers", with its lyrical references to snipers, murder and the PLO, was written in response to the Tamil Tigers being considered terrorists in some quarters.

America has successfully tied all these pockets of independence struggles, revolutions and extremists into one big notion of terrorism.

[4] Shapiro described her music as a "multi-genre pile-up" and likened it to her graphic art, calling it "vivid, gaudy, lo-fi and deceptively candyfloss".

and Steve Loveridge created all the album's artwork, using what Spin writer Lorraine Ali called a "guerrilla" style.

In his view, the images were considered controversial only because "rock and roll fans are assumed to be stupid" and would not be expected to ascertain their true significance.

[28] Joshua Chambers-Letson determined that the imagery was perhaps "a means of negotiating the violence necessary" and described the controversy as "an attempt to disengage" from the performative intervention that M.I.A.

[31] Revised release dates of December 2004 and February 2005 were publicised,[30] but the album remained unreleased; at one point, Pitchfork announced that it had been shelved indefinitely.

It was initially released in late 2003 by independent label Showbiz Records, which pressed and distributed 500 promotional copies before M.I.A.

[37] The song was re-released on XL as the second official single from the album in September 2004,[38] and again in October 2005, under the title "Galang '05", with a remix by Serj Tankian.

The release featured rough mixes of tracks from Arular mashed up with songs by other artists, and was promoted by word-of-mouth.

[43][44] In November 2005, she appeared as the support act at a number of dates on Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers Tour.

"[56] In his review for Stylus Magazine, Josh Timmermann described Arular as "a swaggering, spitting, utterly contemporary album" and went on to say, "We've not heard its like before.

"[30] Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield found Arular "weird, playful, unclassifiable, sexy, brilliantly addictive".

[54] Sasha Frere-Jones, writing in The New Yorker, described the album as "genuine world music", based on "the weaving of the political into the fabric of what are still, basically, dance tunes".

[63] The Washington City Paper chose it as the second best album of the year,[64] and Pitchfork and Slant Magazine named Arular the fourth best of 2005.

's method of music making on Arular as an influence on his own work, saying that it reminded him of "just picking up a guitar and [liking] the first three chords you write" as opposed to "agonizing over the hi-hat sound which seems to happen with programming and electronica a lot of the time".