The track is a midtempo hip-hop song with Middle Eastern influences and exhibiting elements of worldbeat, dancehall and syncopated drums in its instrumentation.

Its lyrics revolve around sexual prowess and female empowerment, while its chorus features the refrain "Live fast die young, bad girls do it well" sung in a haughty rap-sung delivery.

The song charted in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Korea, Switzerland, the UK and the US, solely on downloads, and was distributed in physical format on 12 March 2012.

with cowriters Danja and Marcella, who were listening to the record's main mix in a Jeep, were revealed on the rapper's official website and her Twitter page.

[8] Lowe opined that despite her typically "energetic" tracks, the rapper was "finding a new voice on [her] forthcoming album", which perhaps explained "the lack of showing off displayed" on the record.

"Bad Girls" is a midtempo hip hop song with elements of Middle Eastern and Indian hooks with influences of dancehall and worldbeat music.

[12][13] The song's structure is focused on careening beats, synths inspired by Eastern sounds and syncopated drums and an SOS signal rhythm.

professes "Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well" and "My chain hits my chest when I'm banging on the radio" in a nonchalant mannered chant.

"[19] She continues with the line "I had a handle on it / My life, but I broke it" in an emotionally key delivery, a view shared by Will Hermes of Rolling Stone who notes that in an anthem to recklessly empowered car sex, is "surprisingly" melancholy.

"[22] Robert Copsey of Digital Spy wrote that the song served as a "timely reminder" that the musician could make a chart-friendly hit when and if she so chooses.

"[15] Priya Elan of the NME praised the song, writing "With his help this is MIA as you've never heard her before, taking her pan-global pop smarts and injecting them with a huge growth hormone...

's Vicki Leekx mixtape still rides a slinky, Bollywood-style Danja beat, and the key line flips the emotional script: 'I had a handle on it/My life, but I broke it.'

[19] Likewise, in his review of the mixtape, Mike Schiller of PopMatters described "Bad Girls" as the most "obvious call back" to the sound that brought M.I.A.

[26] In consumer guide for MSN Music, critic Robert Christgau named "Bad Girls" as one of three highlights from the Vicki Leekx mixtape.

It was a four-day shoot so everyone was on edge the whole time specifically ME when I had to do bluesteel singing to the camera while the cars did doughnuts on the wet road ten feet away.

[33] The video for "Bad Girls" premiered on Noisey, Vice's new music channel on YouTube, on 2 February 2012 at a total length of four minutes and twelve seconds.

[32] The setting of the music video features crumbled architecture, sustained over years of attack; smouldering oil tankers; young men in kaffiyeh, standing around bored; mysterious women covered from head to toe, with only their kohl-lined eyes flashing out.

It's a dusty evening, where the musician is wearing aviator sunglasses and bling; the women are watched by cheering men as they drive, spin, skid and whoop across the desert plain.

[35] Channelling male angst, futility and anger, old family sedans and BMWs are grabbed and turned into drifting, skiing racing stunt rides.

's "ditching of the gaudy GIF imagery and digital weirdo phase" of her early work, while feeling the singer remained "as flashy" and confident as ever.

[39][40] Claire Suddath of Time agreed that at first glance, the video appeared to be a political statement on women drivers in Saudi Arabia and a stylish, aesthetically pleasing piece, stating that the video was fun either way and that audiences could all agree that women and men should be able to "drag race, pop wheelies and drive their cars on two wheels" equally.

for presenting an accurate picture of male customs in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, continuing "if she's being accused of stereotyping, then she’s turning the oriental fantasy on its head when she has Arabian women dressed in khaki styled, though still Arabian, dress or gear, toting guns and strutting their stuff with a swagger unknown to the conservative female society that has women closed off or 'haremed' from the male gaze.

M.I.A's girls are a far-cry from the harem-veiled subversive mysterious women of the oriental fantasy in their floaty feminine veils, if we're accusing her of feeding stereotypes.

[39] Comfort Clinton of PopMatters hailed the video as "certainly" echoing the lyrics of the song "live fast, die young", with death-defying stunts and cars driving "more dramatic circles than M.I.A.

The writer continued "Maya may be rapping about ladies' sexual dominance over men, but her clip is chaste – we're oohing and ahhing over car tricks, not hard bodies.

"[46] Elizabeth Flock writing in The Washington Post noted that the video was made at a time when Saudi women began fighting against the ban outside of court and online, while following the release of the video, two Saudi female activists – Manal al-Sharif and Samar Badawi – filed lawsuits against the government for refusing to give them a driver's licence, the first high-profile legal challenge to the country's ban on female drivers.

[47] Naomi Zeichner of The Fader noted the video to be audacious, while Hua Hsu, writing for Grantland.com, praised Gavras as "strikingly" talented, making "scenes of faraway desperation look like the most beautiful, mysterious cologne advertisements ever" and the artistic vision of M.I.A.

so riveting, "important,"" and almost prophetic, saying "She flatters our desire for authenticity, for a real spokesperson who apprehends the full circumference of the planet, and then she goes and makes a bright, gaudy T-shirt of it all.

If she has sold out – if she represented anything in the first place – then she's shown us exactly what our dollar can buy: an absolutely stunning video starring some of the Middle East's finest stunt drivers.

[50] To celebrate their 60th anniversary, French clothing company Moncler commissioned 150 ice skaters to perform a routine to "Bad Girls" in Central Park for their 2012 New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter finale.