and melodies, and she programmed drum beats at home on the drum machine. Having produced rough tracks via trial and error, she honed the finished songs in collaboration with other writer-producers. Through these collaborations, she sought to produce a diverse style and "drag [her collaborators] out of their boxes, musically". DJ Diplo introduced elements of Brazilian baile funk to "Bucky Done Gun". 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. had bought in India, augmented with sounds produced by objects such as pens and mobile phones. Steve Mackey and Ross Orton, known professionally as Cavemen, worked on "Galang", which M.I.A. had initially produced with her 505 and a basic four-track tape recorder. 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. The track was co-written by Frischmann, whose input M.I.A. described as "refreshing". She initially hoped to feature guest vocalists on the album, but was unable due to budget constraints and other artists' unfamiliarity with her work. She chose to perform all the vocals herself, saying, "I just quietly got on with it ... I didn't wanna convince anyone it was good. I felt it was much better to prove that I could be an individual." Music and lyrics Arular takes its title from the political code name employed by M.I.A.'s father, Arul Pragasam; she contends that her father's "revolutionary ideals" are the album's thematic base. "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. And my mum always used to say about my father, 'He was so useless, all he ever gave you was his name'. So I turned it around and turned that something into nothing. And at the same time I thought it would be a good way to find him. 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", a prediction which ultimately came true. Despite reports to the contrary, M.I.A. denied that her father was a member