's longtime collaborator Switch primarily handled Matangi's production; Hit-Boy, Doc McKinney, Danja, Surkin, and The Partysquad provided additional contributions.

The album was recorded in various locations around the world and featured uncredited input from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The lyrics feature themes related to Hinduism, including reincarnation and karma, and the music blends Western and Eastern styles.

Matangi received positive reviews from critics and was included in several publications' year-end lists of the best albums of 2013.

travelled to temples and universities in India to research ideas for the album, piqued by stories about female spirituality.

Diplo had accused her of glamorising terrorism through her music and suggested that this had been a factor in the comparative commercial failure of Maya.

had also taken issue with his jealous reaction to her signing for a major record label and comments which he had made in a critical article about her published by the New York Times in 2010.

[14] In an interview with BBC News, she stated that people expected Matangi to be "spa music" due to its themes of spirituality.

The interviewer Mark Savage characterised the album's production as "a chaotic, digitally-degraded thunderstorm of hip-hop and bhangra; punk and pop; spitfire raps and thorny wordplay".

[16] The R&B-influenced single "Bad Girls" combines Middle Eastern and hip-hop elements with a pop chorus.

[21] The opening track "Karmageddon" begins with the om chant, and its lyrics reference karma and the dance of Shiva associated with the Hindu creation myth.

("You Only Live Once"), a slogan popularised by rapper Drake, whose name is referenced in the album's title track.

's controversial appearance at the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show,[26] where she extended her middle finger to the camera while performing with Madonna and Nicki Minaj,[27][28] and suggests that she feels that America rejects her because of her ethnicity.

[30] NME's Tom Howard observed that Matangi noticeably "winds down" over the course of the three tracks which close the album: the dancehall-influenced "Lights", "Know It Ain't Right" and "Sexodus".

Lobenfeld stated that "Atention" contains an uncredited sample of "Never Scared" (2003) by rapper Bone Crusher featuring T.I.

[36] "Only 1 U" uses excerpts of the song "Karuppu Thaan Yenakku Pudichu Coloru" from the 2000 Indian film Vetri Kodi Kattu,[10] and "Exodus" and "Sexodus" contain elements of "Lonely Star" (2011) by the Weeknd, who receives a featured artist credit.

[37] In August 2012, she posted an image of the album's proposed track listing online, with some of the titles partially obscured.

The titles include "Tentple", "Rain" and "Balcony in B—", none of which appear on the final album's track listing.

announced the title of the album in November 2012, explaining that it related to both the Hindu goddess and her own forename, Mathangi.

Stereogum writer Tom Breihan described it as continuing a trend where her albums use an "'ugly computer graphics' visual theme".

[46] Six singles were released from the album, beginning with a new recording of the track "Bad Girls", which had previously appeared on M.I.A.

The track was released as Matangi's lead single on 31 January 2012,[47] accompanied by a music video directed by Romain Gavras, which attracted attention for its apparent focus on laws preventing women in Saudi Arabia from driving.

released an eight-minute mix of songs from the album as part of Kenzo's autumn/winter 2013 collection at its Paris Fashion Week show.

Club's Marah Eakin and Pitchfork's Lindsay Zoladz were both of the opinion that it had suffered due to the long delays to its release and that a number of the tracks sounded stale and utilised outdated reference points.

's earlier song "Bird Flu" and "Sexodus" as "cardboard-stiff", although she did praise "Bad Girls", which in her view far outshone the other tracks on a largely disappointing album.

[80] For The Barnes & Noble Review, Robert Christgau ranked Matangi 33rd on his year-end best albums list.

[85] In the United States, the album debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 15,000 copies,[86] but that remained its peak position, 14 places lower than that achieved by Maya.

claimed that the album's performance was impacted by a lack of support from her record label following the Superbowl incident and other controversies.