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M.I.A. (artist)
Encyclopedia
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , better known by her stage name M.I.A. (both a play on her name and abbreviation
for Missing in Act(i)on), is an English singer-songwriter
, rapper, record producer, painter and director of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of hip hop
, electronica
, dance
, alternative and world music
. M.I.A. began her career in 2000 as a visual artist and designer in West London
. Since rising to prominence in early 2004 for her singles "Sunshowers
" and "Galang", which charted in the U.K. and Canada and reached number eleven on the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales
in the United States, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Grammy Award
s and the Mercury Prize
.
She released her debut album Arular
in 2005 and second album Kala
in 2007 to wide critical acclaim. Arular reached number 20 in Norway and charted in Belgium, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., where it reached number 16 on the Billboard Top Independent Album Chart and number 3 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart. Kala was certified silver in the United Kingdom and gold in Canada and the United States, where it reached number 18 on the Billboard 200
chart and topped the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart. Upon release, Kala charted in several countries across Europe, in Japan and Australia. The album's first single "Boyz
" reached number ninety nine on the Billboard Pop 100 in the United States in 2008, number seven on the Canadian Singles Chart
and number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales in 2007, eight places higher than "Galang" and giving M.I.A. her first top-ten charting single. The single "Paper Planes
" achieved much commercial success, peaking in the top 20 in countries in Europe, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, where it peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100
. As of October 2011, "Paper Planes" certified three times platinum
in the U.S. and Canada, becoming the 29th most downloaded song in the digital era in the United States, and has been certified Gold in New Zealand. It has become her label XL Recordings
best selling single to date.
M.I.A.'s third album Maya
was released in 2010 soon after the controversial song-film short "Born Free
". In its first week of release, the album entered the UK Albums Chart
at number 21, becoming her highest-charting album in the UK. It also became her highest-charting album in the U.S., reaching number nine on the Billboard 200, topping the Dance/Electronic Chart like its predecessor and debuted in the top ten in Finland, Norway, Greece and Canada. The single "XXXO
" reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK and "Teqkilla" entered the Canadian Hot 100
on digital downloads alone. She has embarked on four global headlining tours and is the founder of her own multimedia label, N.E.E.T.. In 2008, M.I.A. was listed in Esquire
magazine's list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century and in 2009, Time magazine
included M.I.A. in its annual Time 100
list of the world's most influential people.
M.I.A. is credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and electronic music, heralded as one of the first acts to come to public attention via the internet and also for revitalising British and world music. M.I.A.'s early compositions relied heavily on the Roland MC-505
sequencer
/drum machine
, while her later work has presented layered textures of instruments, electronics and unusual sound samples to form her acclaimed and distinctive avant garde
music style. Her lyrics incorporate a range of political, social, philosophical and cultural references that have defied existing pop music conventions. A noted philanthropist and activist for many causes, her activism has been met with both appreciation and criticism. In 2002, she received an Alternative Turner Prize nomination for her art, and has been recognized for her work as a music video director, graphic and fashion designer. She is the only artist in history to be nominated for an Academy Award, Grammy Award, Brit Award, Mercury Prize and Alternative Turner Prize, and the first artist of Asian descent to be nominated for an Academy and Grammy Award in the same year.
, London to Arul Pragasam
, an engineer, writer and activist, and his wife, Kala, a seamstress, who are of Hindu
and Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Kala has been a practicing Christian since living in the United Kingdom, and is a commissioned seamstress for the British Royal Family. She works from her home in Tooting
, South London. The couple had two daughters in England, Mathangi ("Maya") and Kali
, both named after two of the Mahavidyas, the ten wisdom Tantric
goddesses in Hinduism. When M.I.A. was six months old, her family moved to Jaffna
, a town in northern Sri Lanka
, where her brother Sugu was born. There, her father adopted the name Arular and became a political activist and founding member of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students
(EROS), a political Tamil group that worked to establish an independent Tamil Eelam
in North Eastern Sri Lanka
.
The first nine years of M.I.A.'s life were marked by displacement caused by the Sri Lankan civil war
. Her family went into hiding from the Sri Lankan Army
and contact between M.I.A. and her father was strictly limited. In Jaffna, M.I.A. attended Tamil Hindu and convent schools such as the Holy Family Convent, Jaffna
where she developed her art skills—painting in particular—to work her way up her class. When the civil war broke out, she notes as "bullying exploitation" the way soldiers from Sri Lanka's military would put guns through holes in the windows and shoot at the school. Her classmates were trained to dive under the table or run next door to English schools that, according to her, "wouldn’t get shot". M.I.A.'s family relocated to Chennai
in Tamil Nadu
, India where they lived in a derelict house and received sporadic visits from M.I.A.'s father, who was introduced to the children as their "uncle". The family resettled in Jaffna
temporarily, only to see the war escalate further in the north east
and M.I.A.'s school was destroyed in a government raid. After experiencing violence at the hands of soldiers, M.I.A.'s mother moved with her children back to London in 1986 where they were housed as refugees. Arular remained on the island and became an independent peace mediator between the two sides of the civil war in the late 80's.
M.I.A. grew up in the Phipps Bridge Estate in the Mitcham
district of South London
, where she learned to speak English. She attended Ricards Lodge High School
in Wimbledon and received her undergraduate degree in fine art, film and video in June 2001 from London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
. Initially her application to the school was rejected, but she was eventually let in, being told that she "had chutzpah
." For two years, M.I.A. lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where she met her fiance, Benjamin Zachary Bronfman
(aka Benjamin Brewer), an environmentalist, founder of Green Owl, musician and scion of the Bronfman dynasty
. M.I.A. owns a home in Brentwood, Los Angeles in the U.S. and splits her time between there and her mother's home in London. She gave birth to her son Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman in February 2009.
that would be accessible to everyday people, something that she felt was missing from her classmates' ethics and the course criteria. At college, she found the fashion courses "disposable" and more current than the film texts that she studied. M.I.A. told Arthur magazine
"[Students there were] exploring apathy, dressing up in some pigeon outfit, or running around conceptualizing...It missed the whole point of art representing society. Social reality didn’t really exist there; it just stopped at theory." She cited "radical cinema" including Harmony Korine
, Dogme 95
and Spike Jonze
as some of her cinematic inspirations during film school. As a student, she was approached by director John Singleton to work on a film in Los Angeles after he had read a script she had written, though she decided not to take up the request. For her degree, M.I.A. prepared her departmental honours thesis on the film CB4
.
M.I.A. befriended students in the college fashion, advertising and graphics departments. She met Justine Frischmann
, frontwoman of the British band Elastica
, through her friend Damon Albarn
, and Frischmann commissioned M.I.A. to create the cover art for the band's 2000 album, The Menace
, and video document their American tour. M.I.A. returned to Jaffna in 2001 to film a documentary on Tamil youth, but was unable to complete the project because she encountered harassment. In 2001, M.I.A.'s first public exhibition
of paintings after graduating took place at the Euphoria Shop on London's Portobello Road
. It featured graffiti art and spray-paint canvasses mixing Tamil political street art with images of London life and consumerist culture. The show was nominated for the Alternative Turner Prize and a monograph book of the collection was published in 2002, titled M.I.A.. Actor Jude Law
was among early buyers of her art.
M.I.A. cites the radio broadcasts she heard emanating from her neighbours' flats in the late '80s as some of her first exposures to her earliest musical influences. From there, she developed an interest in hip-hop
and dancehall
, identifying with "the starkness of the sound" in records by Public Enemy, MC Shan
and Ultramagnetic MCs
; and the "weird, distinct style" of acts such as Silver Bullet
and London Posse
. In college she developed an affinity for punk
and the emerging sounds of Britpop
and electroclash
. M.I.A. cites The Slits
, Malcolm McLaren
and The Clash
as major influences.
By 2001, M.I.A. designed the cover for Elastica's last single "The Bitch Don't Work", and went on the road with the band to video document their tour. The tour's supporting act, electroclash
artist Peaches
, introduced M.I.A. to the Roland MC-505
and encouraged M.I.A. to make music, a medium in which M.I.A. lacked confidence. While vacationing together in Bequia
in the Caribbean, M.I.A. began experimenting with Frischmann's MC-505. She adopted her stage name, "M.I.A.", standing for "Missing In Acton
" during this time. "I started going out to this chicken shed with a sound system. You buy rum through a hatch and dance in the street. They convinced me to come to church where people sing so amazingly. But I couldn’t clap along to hallelujah. I was out of rhythm. Someone said, ‘What happened to Jesus? I saw you dancing last night and you were totally fine.’ They stopped the service and taught me to clap in time. It was embarrassing" she recalled of her time in Bequia. Returning to West London
, where she shared an apartment with Frischmann, she began working with a simple set-up (a second-hand 4-track
tape machine, the MC-505, and a radio microphone), composing and recording a six song demo tape
that included "Lady Killa", "M.I.A.", and "Galang".
In 2003, the independent label Showbiz Records pressed 500 vinyl singles of "Galang", a mix of dancehall
, electro
, jungle, and world music
, with Seattle Weekly
praising its a cappella
coda
as a "lift-up-and-over moment" evoking "clear skies beyond the council flats." File sharing
, college radio airplay, and the rise in popularity of "Galang" and "Sunshowers" in dance clubs and fashion shows made M.I.A. an underground sensation. M.I.A. has been heralded as one of the first artists to build a large fanbase exclusively via these channels and as someone who could be studied to reexamine the internet's impact on how listeners are exposed to new music. She began uploading her music onto her MySpace
account in June 2004. Major record labels caught on to the popularity of "Galang", and M.I.A. was eventually signed to XL Recordings
in mid 2004 by the head of the Showbiz label, Jonathan Dickins. Her debut album, to be titled Arular, was finalized by borrowing studio time.
MIA's next single, "Sunshowers
", released on 5 July 2004, and its B-side ("Fire Fire") described guerrilla warfare
and asylum seeking
, merging ambiguous references to violence and religious persecution with black and white forms of dissidence. For "Sunshowers", M.I.A. wrote her first music video, filmed in the jungles of South India, which she has described as her favourite. "Galang" was re-released in 2004. The music video for "Galang" made in November of that year featured art direction by M.I.A., showing multiple M.I.A.s against a backdrop of militaristic animated graffiti
, and depicted scenes of urban Britain
and war. Both singles appeared on international publications' "Best of the Year" lists and subsequently "Best of the Decade" lists. The songs "Pull Up the People", "Bucky Done Gun" and "10 Dollar" were released as 12-inch single
s and CDs by XL Recordings, which along with the non-label mashup mixtape
of Arular tracks, Piracy Funds Terrorism
, were distributed in 2004.
in Toronto
where concertgoers already knew many of her songs. In March 2005, M.I.A.'s debut album Arular
was released worldwide to critical acclaim after several months delay. The album title is the nom de guerre that M.I.A.'s father took when he joined the Tamil
independence movement, and many of the songs acknowledge her and her father's experiences in Jaffna
. While making Arular in her bedroom in west London, she built tracks off her demos
, using beats she programmed on the Roland MC-505
. The album experiments with bold, jarring and ambient sounds, and its lyrics address the Iraq War and daily life in London as well as M.I.A.'s past.
M.I.A. received praise from artists such as the rapper Nas
, who in early 2005 called her sound "the future". "Galang", "Sunshowers
" and the funk carioca
-inspired co-composition "Bucky Done Gun
" were released as singles from Arular. The release of the latter marked the first time that a funk carioca-inspired song was played on mainstream radio and music television in Brazil, its country of origin. M.I.A. worked with one of her musical influences Missy Elliott
, contributing to the track "Bad Man" on her 2005 album The Cookbook
. Despite initial fears that her dyslexia
might pose problems while touring, M.I.A. supported the album through a series of festival and club
shows, including the Bue Festival, a free headlining show at Central Park
Summerstage
, the Summer Sonic Fest
and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
, where she played an encore in response to crowd enthusiasm, a rare occurrence for the festival. She also toured with Roots Manuva
and LCD Soundsystem
, and ended 2005 briefly touring with Gwen Stefani
and performing at the Big Day Out festival
.
On 19 July 2005, M.I.A. was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize for Arular. According to the music review aggregation Metacritic
, it garnered an average
score of 88 out of 100, described as "universal acclaim". They reported in 2010 that Arular was the seventh best reviewed album of 2005 and the ninth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on Metacritic of the 2000–09 decade. Arular became the second most featured album in music critics’ Year-End Top 10 lists for 2005 and was named best of the year by publications such as Blender, Stylus and Musikbyrån.
, this time named after her mother. Due to censorship
and visa
complications in the United States, the album was recorded in a variety of locations—India
, Trinidad
, Liberia, Jamaica
, Australia, Japan, and the UK. Eventually the album was completed in the U.S.
Kala featured live instrumentation
and layers of traditional dance
and folk
styles such as soca
and the urumee
drum of gaana
, rave music
and bootleg
soundtracks of Tamil film music
, incorporating new styles into her avante-garde electronic dance music
. The songs, artwork and fashion of Kala have been characterized as simultaneously celebratory and infused with raw, "darker, outsider" themes, such as immigration politics, personal relationships and war. The first track from the album to be made available to the public was "Bird Flu
", which was posted on M.I.A.'s MySpace page, with an accompanying music video, in February 2007. Later that year, M.I.A. featured in the song "Come Around", a bonus track on Timbaland
's 2007 album Shock Value and a track on Kala. The album's first official single "Boyz
" was released in June 2007, accompanied by a music video co-directed by Jay Will and M.I.A., becoming M.I.A.'s first top ten charting song. The single "Jimmy
", written about an invitation to tour genocide-affected regions in Rwanda that the singer received from a journalist while staying in Liberia, was released next. The single "Paper Planes
" and the EP Paper Planes - Homeland Security Remixes EP were released digitally in February 2008, the single eventually selling three times platinum
in the U.S. and Canada, becoming the 29th most downloaded song in the digital era in the U.S. and earning a Grammy
nomination for Record of the Year
. In the same year, M.I.A. released the How Many Votes Fix Mix EP
which included a remix of "Boyz" featuring Jay-Z
.
Like its predecessor, universal acclaim met Kala's release in August 2007 and the album earned a normalised
rating of 87 out of 100 on the review aggregator MetaCritic. Kala was a greater commercial success than Arular. To support Kala, M.I.A.'s Kala Tour featuring performances in Europe, America and Asia began soon after its release. Festival appearances included Rock en Seine
, Get Loaded in the Park, the Electric Picnic
, Connect
, the Virgin Festival
s, the Osheaga Festival
and Parklife Festival, and the singer performed three dates opening for Björk
in the U.S. and France. M.I.A. provided guest vocals on tour supporting act Buraka Som Sistema
's kuduro
song "Sound of Kuduro
", recorded in Angola
with an accompanying video. In the same year, M.I.A. and director Spike Jonze
filmed a documentary in the immigrant neighborhood of Woolwich
, South London, where they visited Afrikan Boy
, a Nigerian immigrant rapper who appears on Kala track "Hussel." In Spike Jonze Spends Saturday With M.I.A., she disclosed her plans to launch her own record label, Zig-Zag, with Afrikan Boy’s track "Lidl" being its first release. She ended the year with concerts in the United Kingdom. By year end, Kala was named the best album of 2007 by publications including Rolling Stone and Blender
.MetaCritic reported in 2010 that Kala was the tenth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on Metacritic of the 2000–09 decade, one position below her debut album Arular.
M.I.A. performed on the People vs. Money Tour
during the first half of 2008. She cancelled the final leg of her tour in Europe through June and July after revealing her intentions to take a career break and work on other art projects, go back to college and make a film. Her last performance of the tour was at the Bonnaroo Music Festival
.
In 2008, M.I.A. started her record label N.E.E.T. Recordings. The first artist signed to the label was Baltimore rapper Rye Rye
, who performed with M.I.A. at the Diesel XXX party at Pier 3 in Brooklyn in October 2008 where it was revealed that M.I.A. was pregnant with her first child. M.I.A. contributed songs for A. R. Rahman
's score of the film Slumdog Millionaire
, which included the collaboration "O…Saya"; she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song
and a World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film
for the song. M.I.A. was due to perform at the Oscars ceremony
two weeks after her Grammy Award performance, but could not as she had just given birth to her son. M.I.A. is the first person of Asian descent to be nominated for an Oscar and Grammy award in the same year.
, indie rock band Sleigh Bells
and visual artist Jaime Martinez by late 2009. 3D photographic images of M.I.A. by Martinez were commissioned in April of that year. In August 2009, M.I.A. began composing and recording her third studio album in a home studio section in her Los Angeles house. In January 2010, M.I.A. posted her video for the song "Space" from her forthcoming third album. While composing it, M.I.A. co-wrote a song with Christina Aguilera
called "Elastic Love" for Aguilera's album Bionic.
By April 2010, the song and music video/short film "Born Free
," a song from Maya, were leaked online and later released via M.I.A.'s official website and online music stores. The video-film short was directed by Romain Gavras
and written by M.I.A., depicting genocide against red-haired adolescents being forced to run across a minefield and caused controversy due to its graphically violent content. Although not an official single, the song charted in Sweden and the United Kingdom. M.I.A.'s third album, Maya
—stylised as /\/\ /\ Y /\, a typographic equivalent of M.I.A.'s legal name—was released on 23 June 2010 in Japan with bonus tracks before its release in other countries. Maya became M.I.A.'s highest charting album globally. Originally set to be released on 29 June 2010 in the U.S., her record label announced a new release date of 13 July 2010. The album garnered a generally favourable, although divided, reception from critics. Maya was a more internet-inspired album, illustrating how a multimedia artist
such as herself worked within the music industry. Elements of industrial music
were incorporated into M.I.A.'s sound for the first time. She described the album in an interview with Dazed and Confused
as a mix of "babies, death, destruction and powerlessness".
The first official single from Maya, "XXXO
", was released on 11 May 2010 and reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK "Steppin' Up", "Teqkilla", and "Tell Me Why" were also released as promotional singles exclusively on iTunes
in the days leading to the release of Maya, with "Teqkilla" reaching the top 100 in Canada on digital downloads alone. The video for "XXXO" was released online in August. M.I.A. hinted in an interview to Blitz
that a music video is being made with director Spike Jonze for the single "Teqkilla."
M.I.A. performed at the 2010 Virgin Mobile Festival, Festival Sudoeste, Way Out West Festival
, The Big Chill
, Underage Festival, Øyafestivalen
, the Flow Festival and Rencontres Trans Musicales. She finished 2010 completing the European leg of the Maya Tour
.
From 2000–2010, she has directed the video for Elastica single "Mad Dog God Dam" and videos for her songs "Bird Flu
", "Boyz
", "S.U.S. (Save Ur Soul)", "Space" and "XXXO
", and a video for Rye Rye
's "Bang
". She judged in the Music Video category at the inaugural Vimeo
Festival & Awards in New York in October 2010.
M.I.A. released her second mixtape
, Vicki Leekx
, on 31 December 2010.
On 11 January 2011, Interscope released Internet Connection: The Remixes, an EP to a bonus track from Maya.
It was reported M.I.A. was in the recording studio with Swizz Beatz
, Polow Da Don
, Cataracs, and Chris Brown, hinting at new material for a possible fourth album.
In May 2011, M.I.A. performed on the song C.T.F.O. on SebastiAn's album Total
.
, rhythm and blues, alternative rock
, hip hop, grime, rap ballads and Asian folk and references to her musical influences such as Missy Elliott, Tamil film music, Lou Reed
, The Pixies, Beastie Boys
and London Posse. She was a childhood fan of Boney M
and pop artist Michael Jackson
and has been influenced by The Slits
, Public Enemy, Malcolm McLaren
and The Clash
.
M.I.A. describes her music as dance music
or club music for the "other", and has stressed her preference of being an "anti-popstar". M.I.A.'s early compositions relied heavily on the Roland MC-505, while later M.I.A. experimented
further with her established sound and drew from a range of genres, creating layered textures of instruments, electronics and sounds outside the traditional studio environment.
Jimmy Iovine
, chairman of M.I.A.'s American distribution label Interscope, compares M.I.A. to Reed and punk rock songwriter Patti Smith
, and recalled, "She's gonna do what she's gonna do, I can't tell her shit." "The really left-of-center artists, you really wonder about them. Can the world catch up? Can the culture meet them in the middle? That’s what the adventure is. It doesn’t always happen, but it should and it could." Richard Russell
, head of XL Recordings
, states, "You've got to bend culture around to suit you, and I think M.I.A has done that" adding that M.I.A.'s composition and production skills were a major attraction for him. As a vocalist, M.I.A. is recognisable by her distinctive whooping, chanting voice, which has been described as having an "indelible, nursery-rhyme swing." She has adopted different singing styles on her songs, from aggressive raps, to semi-spoken and melodic vocals. She has said of the sometimes "unaffected" vocals and delivery of her lyrics, "It is what it is. Most people would just put it down to me being lazy. But at the same time, I don’t want [that perfection]," saying some of the "raw and difficult" vocal styles she used reflected what was happening to her during recording. Sasha Frere-Jones
, critic of The New Yorker
praised the self made "unpretentious, stuck together with Scotch tape" style that M.I.A. achieves with her Roland MC-505 drum machine and keyboard unit, noting that many people had tried to copy the style since. The Guardian
critic Hattie Collins commented of M.I.A.'s influence, "A new rave
r before it was old. A baile funk/pop pioneer before CSS and Bonde do Rolê
emerged. A quirky female singer/rapper before the Mini Allens
had worked out how to log on to MySpace. Missing In Action (or Acton, as she sometimes calls herself) has always been several miles ahead of the pack."
M.I.A.'s stage performances are described as "highly energetic", often with scenes of what Rolling Stone
critic Rob Sheffield
describes as "jovial chaos, with dancers and toasters and random characters roaming the stage." Camille Dodero, writing in The Village Voice
opined that M.I.A. "works hard to manifest the chaos of her music in an actual environment, and, more than that, to actively create discomfort, energy, and anger through sensory overload." Her role as an artist in and voice lender to the subaltern is appreciated by theorists as having brought such ideas to first world view. USA Today
included her on its list of the 100 Most Interesting People of 2007 and she was named one of Time Out 's 40th Birthday London Heroes in 2008. The same year, Esquire
listed M.I.A. as one of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st century, describing her as the first and only major artist in world music, and in 2009 she was cited in Time magazine's Time 100 as one of the world's most influential people for her global influence across many genres. In December 2010, USA Today listed M.I.A. at number 63 on its list of the "100 People of 2010". M.I.A. placed number 14 on Rolling Stones Decade-End Readers' Poll of "Top Artists Of The Decade."
and published several of her brightly coloured stencils and paintings portraying the tiger, a symbol of Tamil nationalism
, ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and urban Britain in the early 2000s. Lyrics on Arular
regarding her experiences of identity politics, poverty, revolution, gender and sexual stereotypes, war, and the conditions of working class in London were hailed as new and unorthodox, setting her apart from previous artists. The album references the Palestine Liberation Organization
and the Tamil independence movements
and features culture jamming
, multi-lingual slang, strident and subtle imagery. Her albums' social commentary and storytelling have incited debate on the "invigoratingly complex" politics of the issues she highlighted in the album, breaking taboos while the West was engaged in the 2003 Iraq War in the Middle East. Government visits to her official website following her debut album's release in 2005, and a U.S. refusal to grant M.I.A. a travel visa
coupled with her brief presence on the U.S. Homeland Security Risk List in 2006 due to her politically charged lyrics led to her second album Kala
being recorded in a variety of locations around the world.
On Kala
, M.I.A.'s songs explored immigration politics and her personal relationships. Many related her experiences during recording sessions in Chennai, Angola, Trinidad shantytowns, Liberia and London, and were well acclaimed. The album's artwork was inspired by African art, "from dictator fashion to old stickers on the back of cars," which like her clothing range, she hoped would capture "a 3-D sense, the shapes, the prints, the sound, film, technology, politics, economics" of a certain time. I-D magazine described the "bleeding cacophany of graphics" on her website during this time as evoking the "noisy amateurism" of the early web, but also embodying a rejection of today's "glossy, professional site design" which was felt to "efface the medium rather than celebrate it." Jeff Chang
, writing for The Nation
, described a "Kala for the Nation" and the album's music, lyrics and imagery as encompassing "everywhere—or, to be specific, everywhere but the First World's self-regarding 'here'," stating that against a media flow that suppresses the "ugliness" of reality and fixes beauty to consumption, M.I.A. forces a conversation about how the majority live, closing the distance "between 'here' and everywhere else". He felt that Kala explored poverty, violence and globalization through the eyes of "children left behind."
Her third album, Maya
, tackled information politics in the digital age, loaded with technological references and love songs, and deemed by Kitty Empire
writing in The Observer
to be her most melancholic and mainstream effort. Her genocide-depicting 2010 video for the single "Born Free
" was deemed by Ann Powers
writing in the Los Angeles Times
to be "concentrating fully" on the physical horror of gun butts and bullets hitting flesh, with the scenes giving added poignancy to the lyrical themes of the song. Interpreted as a comment on the Arizona immigration law, America's military might and desensitised attitudes towards violence, others found that the video stressed that genocide still exists and violent repression remains commonplace. Some critics described the film as "sensationalist". Neda Ulaby
of NPR
described the video as intended for "shock value" in the service of nudging people into considering real issues that can be hard to talk about. M.I.A. revealed that she felt "disconnected" during the writing process, and spoke of the Internet inspiration and themes of information politics that could be found in the songs and the artwork.
Her work has generated widespread acclaim. PopMatters
writer Rob Wheaton felt M.I.A. subverted the "abstract, organized, refined" distilling of violence in Western popular music and imagination and made her work represent much of the developing world's decades-long experiences of "arbitrary, unannounced, and spectacular" slaughter, deeming her work an "assault" with realism. Some detractors criticized M.I.A. early in her music career for "using radical chic" and for her attendance of an art school. Critic Simon Reynolds
, writing in The Village Voice in 2005 saw this as a lack of authenticity and felt M.I.A. was "a veritable vortex of discourse, around most likely irresolvable questions concerning authenticity, postcolonialism, and dilettantism". Critic Robert Christgau
described Reynolds' argument as "cheap tack" in another article written in the publication, stating M.I.A's experiences connected her to world poverty in a way "few Western whites can grasp". He questioned why M.I.A.'s 2001 Alternative Turner Prize nominated images of pastel-washed tigers, soldiers, guns, armored vehicles, and fleeing civilians that bedeck M.I.A.'s albums and videos were now assumed or analyzed as being incendiary propaganda, suggesting that unlike art buyers, rock and roll fans were "assumed to be stupid". Reynolds later argued that M.I.A. was the "Artist of the Decade" in a 2009 issue of The Guardian. Music culture writer Michael Meyer opined that M.I.A.'s record imagery, lyrical booklets, homepages and videos supported the "image of provocation yet also avoidance of, or inability to use consistent images and messages." Instead of catering to stereotypes, he felt that M.I.A. "played with them" creating an uncategorizable and hence unsettling result. Critic Zach Baron felt that it had been shown in her career that M.I.A. had "always been adept at using a larger force against itself." M.I.A. has been hailed as demonstrating dislocation to be a "productive site of departure" and praised for her ability to transform such a "disadvantage" into a creative form of expression.
M.I.A. views her work as reflective, pieced together in one piece "so you can acquire it and hear it." She states, "All that information floats around where we are—the images, the opinions, the discussions, the feelings—they all exist, and I felt someone had to do something about it because I can't live in this world where we pretend nothing really matters." On the political nature of her songs she has said, "Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked." Censorship on MTV
of "Sunshowers" proved controversial and was again criticized following Kala release "Paper Planes". YouTube's block and subsequent age gating/obscuring of the video for "Born Free" from Maya due to its graphic violence/political subtext was criticized by M.I.A. as hypocritical, citing the Internet channel's streaming of real-life killings. She went on to state,
"It's just fake blood and ketchup and people are more offended by that than the execution videos", referring to clips of Sri Lankan troops extrajudicially shooting unarmed, blindfolded, naked men that she had previously tweeted. Despite the block, the video remained on her website and Vimeo, and has been viewed 30 million times on the internet.
in June 2010:
M.I.A. attributes much of her success to the "homeless, rootlessness" of her early life, and is considered to be a refugee icon. The 2008 Experience Music Project
's Pop Conference held in Seattle featured paper submissions and discussions on M.I.A. presented on the theme of "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change." Throughout her career, M.I.A. has used networking sites such as Twitter and MySpace to discuss and highlight the human rights abuses and war crimes Sri Lanka is accused of perpetrating against Tamils. As the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests
gathered pace, M.I.A. joined other activists in condemning the actions of the Sri Lankan government against the Tamils as a slow "systematic" genocide. She stated that international governments were privy to Sri Lanka's use of widespread censorship and propaganda on the rebellion during the island's civil war
to aid its impunity in numerous atrocities on civilians, but had no will to end it. Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary denied that his country perpetrated genocide, responding that he felt M.I.A. was "misinformed" and that "it's best she stays with what she's good at, which is music, not politics." Consequently, she has been accused of being a "terrorist sympathiser" and "LTTE supporter" by the Sri Lankan government, whose agents have threatened listeners with prosecution if they post her music videos on the internet. Two weeks before his murder, the Tigers' Political Head B. Nadesan told Indian magazine The Week
that M.I.A.'s humanitarianism had been a source of strength to Eelam Tamils and fearless, knowingly amidst the "all-powerful Sri Lankan propaganda machinery that demonises any one who speaks for the Tamils." Miranda Sawyer
of The Observer
felt that M.I.A. was emotional and that this could be limiting her, stating that while she was well informed, "you're not meant to get involved when giving information out about war", and that the difficulty for M.I.A. was that the world "doesn't really care." M.I.A. endorsed candidate Jan Jananayagam
at the 2009 European Parliament election
, a last minute candidate standing on a platform of anti-genocide, civil liberties, financial transparency, the environment and women's rights, who became one of the most successful independent election candidates ever despite her loss in the general election. Death threats directed at M.I.A. and her son have followed her activism, which she also cited as an influence on the songs on her album Maya. In 2010, she condemned the Chinese Government's role in supporting and supplying arms to the Sri Lankan government during the conflict in an interview with music magazine Mondomix, stating that China's influence within the UN was preventing prosecutions of war crimes committed during the conflict.
The same year, M.I.A. voiced her fears of the influence of video game violence on her son and his generation, saying, "I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan
. They feel like they know the violence when they don't. Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it's like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier." In October 2009, she stated that the President of the United States
Barack Obama
should give back his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
"like John Lennon
sent back his MBE
." She has joked about the irony further by playing on the famous Lenon phrase "Give Peace a Chance", explaining "I'm a bit beyond being an artist who says, 'Give peace a chance.' Part of me is like, 'Give war a chance,' just to stir it up, you know what I mean?".
Prior to her 2008 Coachella festival appearance, M.I.A. filmed from her Bed Stuy apartment window and posted on YouTube an incident involving a black man being apprehended by white police officers, which in light of the Sean Bell shooting incident
, elicited commentary debating the force used for the arrest.
During the recording of the album Maya, she spoke of the combined effects that news corporations and search engine Google
have on news and data collection, while stressing the need for alternative news sources that she felt her son's generation would need in order to ascertain truth. She told Nylon
magazine that social networking site Facebook and Google's development "by the CIA" was harmful to internet freedom. Some criticized the claim as lacking detail.
Media portrayals of M.I.A. throughout her career have been called "problematic" by some commentators. M.I.A. confronted Pitchforkmedia over some of their writings in 2007. In 2010, criticism was directed at the New York Times, which included a tweet by M.I.A. saying "Fuck the New York Times," after the paper published controversial articles about M.I.A. and Sri Lanka. Following this, The New York Times Magazine
published a controversial piece about M.I.A. and the conflict, employing a "sneering" tone and making many points through implication. M.I.A. and others raised concerns of misrepresentation by the magazine. They cited dichotomies between articles printed by the paper itself on the conflict as evidence of ignorance. M.I.A.'s response attracted considerable interest, due to her Twitter posting of a telephone number asking followers to ring and give feedback on the piece, the revelatory content of conversations she secretly taped, and the novelty of M.I.A. herself "turning the tables" on a yellow journalist. In 2010, she expressed disappointment that Wikileaks
distributed their documents to other news publications—including the New York Times—to gain wider coverage, as she stated their "way of reporting" did not work.
Following the 2011 United Kingdom anti-austerity protests
and the 2011 London riots, during which her cousin's jewelry shop in Croydon
was attacked and looted, M.I.A. criticized the UK Government's response to the rioters as failing to address the root causes of them. She recalled the importance of a council funded youth worker
she had in her school years, the use of tax money to incentivise a new business job creation program
amongst the working class and imprisonment conditions which encouraged consumerism. She stated that the top forty companies in Britain who banked offshore
should be made to pay taxes in the U.K. and "cut the poor people some slack."
M.I.A. cites guerrilla
art and fashion as major influences. Her mother works as a seamstress in London. An early interest in fashion and textiles—designing confections of "bright fluorescent fishnet fabrics"—was a hallmark of her time at Central Saint Martins College
. M.I.A. was a roommate of fashion designer Luella Bartley
and is a long-time friend of designer Carri Mundane
. Clothes from her limited-edition "Okley Run" line—Mexican
and Afrika line jackets and leggings, Islamic-inspired and water melon-print hoodies, and tour-inspired designs—were sold in 2008 during New York fashion week. She commented, "I wanted to tie all my work together. When I make an album, I make a number of artworks that go with it, and now I make some clothes that go with it too. So this Okley run was an extension of my Kala album and artwork."
Contrary to her present style, M.I.A.'s Arular era style has been described as "tattered hand me downs and patched T-shirts of indigents", embodying the "uniform of the refugee
" but modified with cuts, alterations and colours to fashion a distinctly new style and apparel line. M.I.A. built on this during the Kala era with a "playful" combination of baggy t-shirts, leggings and short-shorts. She incorporated eccentric accessories in bold patterns, sparkle and "over-saturated" neon colour to fashion her signature style which inspired flocks of "garishly-clothed all-too-sassy" new-rave girls with bright red tights, cheetah-skin smock and faded 80's T- shirts. Her commodifying and performance of this refugee image has been noted to "reposition" perceptions of it in the wider public. Hailed as presenting a challenge to the mainstream with her ironic style, M.I.A. has been praised for dictating such a subcultural trend worldwide, combining "adolescent" frustrations of race and class with a strong desire to dance.
M.I.A. was once denied entry into a Marc Jacobs
party, but subsequently DJed at the designer's 2008 fashion show afterparty, and modelled for "Marc by Marc Jacobs" in Spring/Summer 2008. M.I.A.'s fashion and style landed her on Vogue
's 10 Best Dressed of 2008. She turned down her inclusion on People
magazine's list of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" the same year. M.I.A.'s status as a style icon, trendsetter and trailblazer is globally affirmed, with her distinct identity, style, and music illuminating social issues of gender
, the third world
, and popular music. Critics point out that such facets of her public persona underline the importance of authenticity, challenging the globalized popular music market, and demonstrating music's strive to be political. Her albums have been met with acclaim, often heralded as "eclectic" for possessing a genre all their own, "packaging inherent politics in the form of pleasurable dance music." M.I.A.'s artistic efforts to connect this "extreme eclecticism" with issues of exile, war, violence
and terrorism
are both commended and criticized. Commentators laud M.I.A.'s use and subversion of her refugee and migrant
experiences, through the weaving of musical creativity, artwork and fashion with her personal life as having dispelled stereotypical notions of the immigrant experience. This gives her a unique place in popular music, while demanding new responses within popular music, media and fashion culture. M.I.A. has been the muse of designers Donatella Versace
and Alexander Wang
and photographers David Bailey and Rankin
.
and set up school-building projects in Liberia
in 2006. She supports the Unstoppable Foundation, cofunding the establishment of the Becky Primary School in Liberia. During her visit to Liberia she met the then President of Liberia, rehabilitated ex-child soldiers and appeared as part of a humanitarian mission there, hosting a "4Real" TV-Series documentary on the post war situation in the country with activist Kimmie Weeks
. Following her performance at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards
afterparty, she donated her $100,000 performance fee to building more schools in the country, telling the crowd, "It costs $52,000 to build a school for 1,000." Winning the 2008 Official Soundclash Championships (iPod Battle) with her "M.I.A. and Friends" team, 20% of the following year's championship ticket sales were donated to her Liberian school building projects. In 2009, she supported the "Mercy Mission to Vanni" aid ship, destined to send civilian aid from Britain to Vanni
and controversially blocked from reaching its destination. The country's navy announced that it would fire on any ship that entered its waters, and M.I.A. was singled out on the Sri Lankan army's official website after the singer announced her support for the campaign. In 2011, following her performance at the Roskilde Festival
, she donated $250,000 from the Roskilde Festival Charity Society to help bring justice to Tamil victims of war crimes and genocide and to aid advocacy and ensure legal rights for refugees and witnesses.
Abbreviation
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...
for Missing in Act(i)on), is an English singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
, rapper, record producer, painter and director of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
, electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, dance
Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...
, alternative and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. M.I.A. began her career in 2000 as a visual artist and designer in West London
West (London sub region)
The West is a sub-region of the London Plan corresponding to the London Boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow. The sub region was established in 2004 and was adjusted in 2008 to include Kensington and Chelsea. The west has a population of 1.6 million and...
. Since rising to prominence in early 2004 for her singles "Sunshowers
Sunshowers
"Sunshowers" is a song by British musician M.I.A. from her critically acclaimed debut album Arular . It was written and produced by Maya Arulpragasam, Ross Orton, Steve Mackey, August Darnell and Stony Jr. Browder with additional production by Nesreen Shah and Anthony Whiting. The song includes a...
" and "Galang", which charted in the U.K. and Canada and reached number eleven on the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales
Hot Dance Singles Sales
Hot Dance Singles Sales is a chart released weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States, established in 1985. It measures the sale of commercially released singles that deal with dance music and remixes...
in the United States, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
s and the Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...
.
She released her debut album Arular
Arular
Arular is the 2005 debut album by British musician M.I.A. Originally set for a September 2004 release, the album was delayed due to problems obtaining permission to use samples. Arular was finally released in the US on 22 March 2005 and a month later in the UK with a slightly different track...
in 2005 and second album Kala
Kala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
in 2007 to wide critical acclaim. Arular reached number 20 in Norway and charted in Belgium, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., where it reached number 16 on the Billboard Top Independent Album Chart and number 3 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart. Kala was certified silver in the United Kingdom and gold in Canada and the United States, where it reached number 18 on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
chart and topped the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart. Upon release, Kala charted in several countries across Europe, in Japan and Australia. The album's first single "Boyz
Boyz (song)
"Boyz" is a song recorded by artist M.I.A. for her second album Kala . The song was released as the album's lead single by XL Recordings and Interscope Records on 11 June 2007 in 12-inch single, CD single, digital download and USB flash drive formats...
" reached number ninety nine on the Billboard Pop 100 in the United States in 2008, number seven on the Canadian Singles Chart
Canadian Singles Chart
The Canadian Singles Chart is currently compiled by the U.S.-based music sales tracking company, Nielsen SoundScan . The chart is compiled every Wednesday, and is published by Jam! Canoe on Thursdays....
and number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales in 2007, eight places higher than "Galang" and giving M.I.A. her first top-ten charting single. The single "Paper Planes
Paper Planes
"Paper Planes" is a song recorded by musician M.I.A. for her second studio album Kala released in 2007. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Topper Headon, Mick Jones, Wesley "Diplo" Pentz, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer and produced by Diplo with additional production by Switch...
" achieved much commercial success, peaking in the top 20 in countries in Europe, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, where it peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
. As of October 2011, "Paper Planes" certified three times platinum
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
in the U.S. and Canada, becoming the 29th most downloaded song in the digital era in the United States, and has been certified Gold in New Zealand. It has become her label XL Recordings
XL Recordings
XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records.Though only releasing an average of six albums a year, XL Recordings has worked with The Prodigy, Radiohead, The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., Vampire...
best selling single to date.
M.I.A.'s third album Maya
Maya (M.I.A. album)
Maya is the third studio album by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A., released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings and Interscope Records. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr and Rusko...
was released in 2010 soon after the controversial song-film short "Born Free
Born Free (M.I.A. song)
"Born Free" is a song by recording artist M.I.A., released alongside an accompanying short film/music video of the same name from her third album, /\/\/\Y/\. "Born Free" was released as the unofficial first single from the album and premiered on internet music stores on April 23, 2010, with the...
". In its first week of release, the album entered the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
at number 21, becoming her highest-charting album in the UK. It also became her highest-charting album in the U.S., reaching number nine on the Billboard 200, topping the Dance/Electronic Chart like its predecessor and debuted in the top ten in Finland, Norway, Greece and Canada. The single "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
" reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK and "Teqkilla" entered the Canadian Hot 100
Canadian Hot 100
The Canadian Hot 100 is a music singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks songs in Canada. The chart debuted in the Billboard issue dated June 16, 2007 and was made available for the first time via their online services on June 7, 2007...
on digital downloads alone. She has embarked on four global headlining tours and is the founder of her own multimedia label, N.E.E.T.. In 2008, M.I.A. was listed in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
magazine's list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century and in 2009, Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
included M.I.A. in its annual Time 100
Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.-History and format:...
list of the world's most influential people.
M.I.A. is credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and electronic music, heralded as one of the first acts to come to public attention via the internet and also for revitalising British and world music. M.I.A.'s early compositions relied heavily on the Roland MC-505
Roland MC-505
The Roland MC-505 is a combination of MIDI sequencer/arranger, synthesizer, and drum machine with built-in real-time Arpeggiator, LFO, VCF and Envelope Knobs for tweaking...
sequencer
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
/drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
, while her later work has presented layered textures of instruments, electronics and unusual sound samples to form her acclaimed and distinctive avant garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
music style. Her lyrics incorporate a range of political, social, philosophical and cultural references that have defied existing pop music conventions. A noted philanthropist and activist for many causes, her activism has been met with both appreciation and criticism. In 2002, she received an Alternative Turner Prize nomination for her art, and has been recognized for her work as a music video director, graphic and fashion designer. She is the only artist in history to be nominated for an Academy Award, Grammy Award, Brit Award, Mercury Prize and Alternative Turner Prize, and the first artist of Asian descent to be nominated for an Academy and Grammy Award in the same year.
Family and early life
M.I.A. was born in HounslowHounslow
Hounslow is the principal town in the London Borough of Hounslow. It is a suburban development situated 10.6 miles west south-west of Charing Cross. It forms a post town in the TW postcode area.-Etymology:...
, London to Arul Pragasam
Arul Pragasam
Arul Pragasam is a Tamil activist and former revolutionary from Jaffna who had a part in forming the group Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students during the Tamil independence movements to secure an independent Tamil Eelam. Arulpragasam graduated in Engineering from the Peoples' Friendship...
, an engineer, writer and activist, and his wife, Kala, a seamstress, who are of Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
and Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Kala has been a practicing Christian since living in the United Kingdom, and is a commissioned seamstress for the British Royal Family. She works from her home in Tooting
Tooting
Tooting is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
, South London. The couple had two daughters in England, Mathangi ("Maya") and Kali
Kali Arulpragasam
Kali Arulpragasam is a jewellery designer based in London, UK. She is the founder and creative director of the jewellery company and label "Super Fertile," founded in 2006.-Super Fertile:...
, both named after two of the Mahavidyas, the ten wisdom Tantric
Tantric
Tantric can refer to:*Tantra, especially Hindu Tantra and tantric yoga*Neotantra, a term used to describe the modern, western use of the word Tantra*Tantric Buddhism, see Vajrayana*Tantric , a hard rock band from Louisville, Kentucky...
goddesses in Hinduism. When M.I.A. was six months old, her family moved to Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
, a town in northern Sri Lanka
Northern Province, Sri Lanka
The Northern Province is one of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but did not have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Between 1988 and 2006 the province was...
, where her brother Sugu was born. There, her father adopted the name Arular and became a political activist and founding member of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students
Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students
The Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students , also known as the Eelam Revolutionary Organisers, is a former Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka. Most of the EROS membership was absorbed into the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1990. The rump, which continues to use the EROS name, has...
(EROS), a political Tamil group that worked to establish an independent Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
in North Eastern Sri Lanka
North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
The North Eastern Province was one of the provinces of Sri Lanka. The province was created in September 1988 by merging the Northern and Eastern provinces. This merger was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2006. The province was formally demerged into the Northern and Eastern...
.
The first nine years of M.I.A.'s life were marked by displacement caused by the Sri Lankan civil war
Sri Lankan civil war
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a separatist militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil...
. Her family went into hiding from the Sri Lankan Army
Sri Lankan Army
The Sri Lanka Army is the oldest and largest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and is responsible for land-based military and humanitarian operations. Established as the Ceylon Army in 1949, it was renamed when Sri Lanka became a republic in 1972...
and contact between M.I.A. and her father was strictly limited. In Jaffna, M.I.A. attended Tamil Hindu and convent schools such as the Holy Family Convent, Jaffna
Holy Family Convent, Jaffna
Holy Family Convent is a girls public provincial school in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The school was established in 1845. It consists of both a Tamil and English convent.-History:...
where she developed her art skills—painting in particular—to work her way up her class. When the civil war broke out, she notes as "bullying exploitation" the way soldiers from Sri Lanka's military would put guns through holes in the windows and shoot at the school. Her classmates were trained to dive under the table or run next door to English schools that, according to her, "wouldn’t get shot". M.I.A.'s family relocated to Chennai
Chennai
Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
in Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
, India where they lived in a derelict house and received sporadic visits from M.I.A.'s father, who was introduced to the children as their "uncle". The family resettled in Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
temporarily, only to see the war escalate further in the north east
North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
The North Eastern Province was one of the provinces of Sri Lanka. The province was created in September 1988 by merging the Northern and Eastern provinces. This merger was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2006. The province was formally demerged into the Northern and Eastern...
and M.I.A.'s school was destroyed in a government raid. After experiencing violence at the hands of soldiers, M.I.A.'s mother moved with her children back to London in 1986 where they were housed as refugees. Arular remained on the island and became an independent peace mediator between the two sides of the civil war in the late 80's.
M.I.A. grew up in the Phipps Bridge Estate in the Mitcham
Mitcham
Mitcham is a district in the south west area of London, in the London Borough of Merton. A suburban area, Mitcham is located on the border of Inner London and Outer London. It is both residentially and financially developed, well served by Transport for London, and home to Mitcham Town Centre,...
district of South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
, where she learned to speak English. She attended Ricards Lodge High School
Ricards Lodge High School
Ricards Lodge High School is a single sex comprehensive secondary school, for girls aged 11 to 16, located on Lake Road in Wimbledon, London. The school's headteacher has been Ms Alison Jerrard since 2005....
in Wimbledon and received her undergraduate degree in fine art, film and video in June 2001 from London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...
. Initially her application to the school was rejected, but she was eventually let in, being told that she "had chutzpah
Chutzpah
Chutzpah is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad, but it is generally used negatively. The Yiddish word derives from the Hebrew word , meaning "insolence", "audacity". The modern English usage of the word has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in...
." For two years, M.I.A. lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where she met her fiance, Benjamin Zachary Bronfman
Benjamin Bronfman
Benjamin Zachary Bronfman , is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and musician. Bronfman is currently a Strategic Advisor & principal of Global Thermostat and Algae Systems LLC. He was a member of rock band The Exit , and he is currently a member of the music collective, Teachers, and co-founder...
(aka Benjamin Brewer), an environmentalist, founder of Green Owl, musician and scion of the Bronfman dynasty
Bronfman family
The Bronfman family is a Canadian Jewish family. It owes its initial fame to Samuel Bronfman , who made a fortune in the alcoholic distilled beverage business during the 20th century through the family's Seagram Company. The family is of Russian Jewish and Romanian Jewish ancestry...
. M.I.A. owns a home in Brentwood, Los Angeles in the U.S. and splits her time between there and her mother's home in London. She gave birth to her son Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman in February 2009.
Visual art and film
While attending Central St Martins College, M.I.A. wanted to make films and art depicting realismRealism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
that would be accessible to everyday people, something that she felt was missing from her classmates' ethics and the course criteria. At college, she found the fashion courses "disposable" and more current than the film texts that she studied. M.I.A. told Arthur magazine
Arthur (magazine)
Arthur magazine, a free bi-monthly 50,000-copy periodical, was founded in October, 2002 by publisher Laris Kreslins and editor Jay Babcock. It has received favorable attention from other periodicals such as L.A. Weekly, Print, Punk Planet and Rolling Stone...
"[Students there were] exploring apathy, dressing up in some pigeon outfit, or running around conceptualizing...It missed the whole point of art representing society. Social reality didn’t really exist there; it just stopped at theory." She cited "radical cinema" including Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine
The story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog...
, Dogme 95
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...
and Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
as some of her cinematic inspirations during film school. As a student, she was approached by director John Singleton to work on a film in Los Angeles after he had read a script she had written, though she decided not to take up the request. For her degree, M.I.A. prepared her departmental honours thesis on the film CB4
CB4
CB4 is a 1993 comedy film directed by Tamra Davis, and starring Chris Rock. The film follows a fictional rap group named 'CB4', named after the prison block in which the group was allegedly formed...
.
M.I.A. befriended students in the college fashion, advertising and graphics departments. She met Justine Frischmann
Justine Frischmann
Justine Elinor Frischmann is an English singer and guitarist, best known for being the lead singer of the now defunct band Elastica...
, frontwoman of the British band Elastica
Elastica
Elastica were an English alternative rock band that played punk rock-influenced music. They were best known for their 1995 album Elastica, which produced singles that charted in the US and the UK.-History:...
, through her friend Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn is an English singer-songwriter and record producer who has been involved in many high profile projects, coming to prominence as the frontman and primary songwriter of Britpop band Blur...
, and Frischmann commissioned M.I.A. to create the cover art for the band's 2000 album, The Menace
The Menace
The Menace is the second album by English alternative rock group Elastica, released via Deceptive Records in April 2000.-Background:After the release of their eponymous debut record in 1995, the band started touring and in the process started partying ferociously and dabbling in drugs...
, and video document their American tour. M.I.A. returned to Jaffna in 2001 to film a documentary on Tamil youth, but was unable to complete the project because she encountered harassment. In 2001, M.I.A.'s first public exhibition
Solo show (art exhibition)
A solo show or solo exhibition is an exhibition of the work of only one artist. The artwork may be paintings, drawings, etchings, collage, sculpture, or photography. The creator of any artistic technique may be the subject of a solo show. Other skills and crafts have similar types of shows for the...
of paintings after graduating took place at the Euphoria Shop on London's Portobello Road
Portobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, England. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's...
. It featured graffiti art and spray-paint canvasses mixing Tamil political street art with images of London life and consumerist culture. The show was nominated for the Alternative Turner Prize and a monograph book of the collection was published in 2002, titled M.I.A.. Actor Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
was among early buyers of her art.
Early music career: 2000–2004
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and dancehall
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...
, identifying with "the starkness of the sound" in records by Public Enemy, MC Shan
MC Shan
MC Shan is an American rapper. He is perhaps best known for collaborating with Snow in "Informer", an international number one hit single.-Biography:...
and Ultramagnetic MCs
Ultramagnetic MCs
The Ultramagnetic MC's is an American hip hop group based in Bronx, New York. Originally founded by Kool Keith, the group is composed of Ced Gee, TR Love, and Moe Love. Tim Dog became an unofficial member in 1989. In 1990, DJ Jaycee was added as Roadmanager and backup DJ. A former member, Rooney...
; and the "weird, distinct style" of acts such as Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet (rapper)
Silver Bullet was a rapper born in and raised in London, England. He went to school in Buckingham and then was moved to Leighton Buzzard and then to Aylesbury in 1988...
and London Posse
London Posse
London Posse was one of the earliest groups in the British hip hop scene. It was formed by Sipho the Human Beatbox, along with Rodney P, Bionic and DJ Biznezz. They formed for a tour of the US to support Mick Jones' new group, Big Audio Dynamite...
. In college she developed an affinity for punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and the emerging sounds of Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
and electroclash
Electroclash
Electroclash is a style of music that fuses New Wave and electronic dance music. It emerged in New York and Detroit in the later 1990s, pioneered by acts including I-F and those associated with Gerald Donald, and is associated with acts including Peaches, Adult, and Fischerspooner...
. M.I.A. cites The Slits
The Slits
The Slits were a British punk rock band. The quartet was formed in 1976 by members of the bands The Flowers of Romance and The Castrators. The members were Ari Up , who died of cancer in October 2010, and Palmolive , with Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollitt replacing founding members, Kate Korus and...
, Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...
and The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
as major influences.
By 2001, M.I.A. designed the cover for Elastica's last single "The Bitch Don't Work", and went on the road with the band to video document their tour. The tour's supporting act, electroclash
Electroclash
Electroclash is a style of music that fuses New Wave and electronic dance music. It emerged in New York and Detroit in the later 1990s, pioneered by acts including I-F and those associated with Gerald Donald, and is associated with acts including Peaches, Adult, and Fischerspooner...
artist Peaches
Peaches (musician)
Merrill Beth Nisker , better known by her stage name Peaches, is a Canadian electronic musician and performance artist who lives in Berlin, Germany. Her songs are noted for disregarding traditional gender norms and their use of sexually explicit lyrics...
, introduced M.I.A. to the Roland MC-505
Roland MC-505
The Roland MC-505 is a combination of MIDI sequencer/arranger, synthesizer, and drum machine with built-in real-time Arpeggiator, LFO, VCF and Envelope Knobs for tweaking...
and encouraged M.I.A. to make music, a medium in which M.I.A. lacked confidence. While vacationing together in Bequia
Bequia
Bequia is the largest island in the Grenadines. It is part of the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and is approximately 15 km from the nation's capital, Kingstown.-Geography:The island capital is Port Elizabeth...
in the Caribbean, M.I.A. began experimenting with Frischmann's MC-505. She adopted her stage name, "M.I.A.", standing for "Missing In Acton
Acton, London
Acton is a district of west London, England, located in the London Borough of Ealing. It is situated west of Charing Cross.At the time of the 2001 census, Acton, comprising the wards of East Acton, Acton Central, South Acton and Southfield, had a population of 53,689 people...
" during this time. "I started going out to this chicken shed with a sound system. You buy rum through a hatch and dance in the street. They convinced me to come to church where people sing so amazingly. But I couldn’t clap along to hallelujah. I was out of rhythm. Someone said, ‘What happened to Jesus? I saw you dancing last night and you were totally fine.’ They stopped the service and taught me to clap in time. It was embarrassing" she recalled of her time in Bequia. Returning to West London
West London
West London generally refers to the western portions of London, and may refer specifically to:*West *West End of London*W postcode area...
, where she shared an apartment with Frischmann, she began working with a simple set-up (a second-hand 4-track
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
tape machine, the MC-505, and a radio microphone), composing and recording a six song demo tape
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
that included "Lady Killa", "M.I.A.", and "Galang".
In 2003, the independent label Showbiz Records pressed 500 vinyl singles of "Galang", a mix of dancehall
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...
, electro
Electro (music)
Electro is a genre of electronic dance music directly influenced by the use of TR-808 drum machines, Moog keytar synthesizers and funk sampling...
, jungle, and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
, with Seattle Weekly
Seattle Weekly
Seattle Weekly is a freely distributed newspaper in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded by Darrell Oldham and David Brewster as The Weekly...
praising its a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
coda
Coda (music)
Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
as a "lift-up-and-over moment" evoking "clear skies beyond the council flats." File sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
, college radio airplay, and the rise in popularity of "Galang" and "Sunshowers" in dance clubs and fashion shows made M.I.A. an underground sensation. M.I.A. has been heralded as one of the first artists to build a large fanbase exclusively via these channels and as someone who could be studied to reexamine the internet's impact on how listeners are exposed to new music. She began uploading her music onto her MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
account in June 2004. Major record labels caught on to the popularity of "Galang", and M.I.A. was eventually signed to XL Recordings
XL Recordings
XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records.Though only releasing an average of six albums a year, XL Recordings has worked with The Prodigy, Radiohead, The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., Vampire...
in mid 2004 by the head of the Showbiz label, Jonathan Dickins. Her debut album, to be titled Arular, was finalized by borrowing studio time.
MIA's next single, "Sunshowers
Sunshowers
"Sunshowers" is a song by British musician M.I.A. from her critically acclaimed debut album Arular . It was written and produced by Maya Arulpragasam, Ross Orton, Steve Mackey, August Darnell and Stony Jr. Browder with additional production by Nesreen Shah and Anthony Whiting. The song includes a...
", released on 5 July 2004, and its B-side ("Fire Fire") described guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
and asylum seeking
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
, merging ambiguous references to violence and religious persecution with black and white forms of dissidence. For "Sunshowers", M.I.A. wrote her first music video, filmed in the jungles of South India, which she has described as her favourite. "Galang" was re-released in 2004. The music video for "Galang" made in November of that year featured art direction by M.I.A., showing multiple M.I.A.s against a backdrop of militaristic animated graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
, and depicted scenes of urban Britain
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
and war. Both singles appeared on international publications' "Best of the Year" lists and subsequently "Best of the Decade" lists. The songs "Pull Up the People", "Bucky Done Gun" and "10 Dollar" were released as 12-inch single
12-inch single
The 12-inch single is a type of gramophone record that has wider groove spacing compared to other types of records. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the cutting engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality...
s and CDs by XL Recordings, which along with the non-label mashup mixtape
Mixtape
A Mix Tape or Mixed Tape is a compilation of songs recorded in a specific order, traditionally onto an audio Compact Cassette.A Mix Tape, which usually reflects the musical tastes of its compiler, can range from a casually selected list of favorite songs, to a conceptual mix of songs linked by a...
of Arular tracks, Piracy Funds Terrorism
Piracy Funds Terrorism
Piracy Funds Terrorism Volume 1, usually referred to simply as Piracy Funds Terrorism, is a mixtape produced by British recording artist M.I.A. and American DJ Diplo featuring vocal tracks intended for M.I.A.'s debut album Arular mashed up with samples of other recordings. The mixtape was produced...
, were distributed in 2004.
Arular: 2004–2007
M.I.A. made her North American debut in February 2005 at the Drake HotelDrake Hotel (Toronto)
The Drake Hotel on Queen Street West in Toronto, Ontario, Canada near Parkdale, was opened in 1890 as "Small's Hotel". At the time, the area was a major Canadian Pacific Railway hub near what was then one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the city....
in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
where concertgoers already knew many of her songs. In March 2005, M.I.A.'s debut album Arular
Arular
Arular is the 2005 debut album by British musician M.I.A. Originally set for a September 2004 release, the album was delayed due to problems obtaining permission to use samples. Arular was finally released in the US on 22 March 2005 and a month later in the UK with a slightly different track...
was released worldwide to critical acclaim after several months delay. The album title is the nom de guerre that M.I.A.'s father took when he joined the Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...
independence movement, and many of the songs acknowledge her and her father's experiences in Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
. While making Arular in her bedroom in west London, she built tracks off her demos
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
, using beats she programmed on the Roland MC-505
Roland MC-505
The Roland MC-505 is a combination of MIDI sequencer/arranger, synthesizer, and drum machine with built-in real-time Arpeggiator, LFO, VCF and Envelope Knobs for tweaking...
. The album experiments with bold, jarring and ambient sounds, and its lyrics address the Iraq War and daily life in London as well as M.I.A.'s past.
Nas
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, who performs under the name Nas , formerly Nasty Nas, is an American rapper and actor. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in hip hop and one of the most skilled and influential rappers of all-time...
, who in early 2005 called her sound "the future". "Galang", "Sunshowers
Sunshowers
"Sunshowers" is a song by British musician M.I.A. from her critically acclaimed debut album Arular . It was written and produced by Maya Arulpragasam, Ross Orton, Steve Mackey, August Darnell and Stony Jr. Browder with additional production by Nesreen Shah and Anthony Whiting. The song includes a...
" and the funk carioca
Funk carioca
Funk carioca , favela funk and, elsewhere in the world, baile funk, is a type of dance music from Rio de Janeiro, derived from Miami bass....
-inspired co-composition "Bucky Done Gun
Bucky Done Gun
"Bucky Done Gun" is the third single from M.I.A.'s critically acclaimed album Arular. It is written by Maya Arulpragasam and Wesley Pentz and produced by Diplo, with additional production by A. Brucker, P. Byrne and Wizard...
" were released as singles from Arular. The release of the latter marked the first time that a funk carioca-inspired song was played on mainstream radio and music television in Brazil, its country of origin. M.I.A. worked with one of her musical influences Missy Elliott
Missy Elliott
Melissa Arnette "Missy" Elliott , is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actressA five-time Grammy Award winner, Elliott, with record sales of over seven million in the United States, is the only female rapper to have five albums certified platinum by the RIAA, including one...
, contributing to the track "Bad Man" on her 2005 album The Cookbook
The Cookbook
The Cookbook is the sixth studio album by American rapper Missy Elliott, released by The Goldmind Inc. and Atlantic Records on July 5, 2005, in the United States...
. Despite initial fears that her dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
might pose problems while touring, M.I.A. supported the album through a series of festival and club
Arular Tour
The Arular Tour is a global concert tour by M.I.A. performed in support of her first studio album Arular . It took place from 2005 to 2006....
shows, including the Bue Festival, a free headlining show at Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
Summerstage
Summerstage
SummerStage is an annual, free performing arts summer festival founded in 1986 which takes place at Rumsey Playfield in New York City's Central Park and, since 2010, in parks throughout the five boroughs of New York. In 1994, SummerStage was transferred to the City Parks Foundation, where it has...
, the Summer Sonic Fest
Summer Sonic Festival
The Summer Sonic Festival is an annual two or three-days rock festival held at the same time in Osaka and Chiba. The majority of the bands playing in Osaka the first day go to Chiba the following day and vice versa....
and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a three-day annual music and arts festival, organized by Goldenvoice and held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Inland Empire's Coachella Valley...
, where she played an encore in response to crowd enthusiasm, a rare occurrence for the festival. She also toured with Roots Manuva
Roots Manuva
Rodney Hylton Smith , better known by his stage name Roots Manuva, is a British rapper from Stockwell, South London. He is currently signed to Big Dada.-Biography:...
and LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem was a prominent American dance-punk band from New York City. It was fronted by American singer-songwriter and producer James Murphy, co-founder of record label DFA Records...
, and ended 2005 briefly touring with Gwen Stefani
Gwen Stefani
Gwen Renée Stefani is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. Stefani is the lead vocalist for the rock and ska band No Doubt. Stefani recorded her first solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. in 2004. The album was inspired by music of the 1980s, and was a success with sales of over...
and performing at the Big Day Out festival
Big Day Out
The Big Day Out is an annual music festival held in several cities in Australia and New Zealand in late January. It started in Sydney in 1992, spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth by 1993, with the Gold Coast and Auckland joining in 1994...
.
On 19 July 2005, M.I.A. was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize for Arular. According to the music review aggregation Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, it garnered an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 88 out of 100, described as "universal acclaim". They reported in 2010 that Arular was the seventh best reviewed album of 2005 and the ninth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on Metacritic of the 2000–09 decade. Arular became the second most featured album in music critics’ Year-End Top 10 lists for 2005 and was named best of the year by publications such as Blender, Stylus and Musikbyrån.
Kala: 2007–2009
In 2006 M.I.A. recorded her second studio album KalaKala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
, this time named after her mother. Due to censorship
Censorship of music
Censorship of music is the practice of restricting free access to musical works. This censorship may stem from a wide variety of motivations, including moral, political, military or religious reasons. Censorship can range from the complete government-enforced legal prohibition of a musical work, to...
and visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
complications in the United States, the album was recorded in a variety of locations—India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, Liberia, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, Australia, Japan, and the UK. Eventually the album was completed in the U.S.
Kala featured live instrumentation
Live instrumentation
In music, live instrumentation is the use of acoustic and electronic musical instruments in live music and recording rather than DJing, sampling, and other recording techniques....
and layers of traditional dance
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
and folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
styles such as soca
Soca music
Soca is a style of music from Trinidad and Tobago. Soca is a musical development of traditional Trinidadian calypso, through loans from the 1960s onwards from predominantly black popular music....
and the urumee
Urumee
The urumee is a double-headed hourglass-shaped drum from the state of Tamil Nadu, South India. Two skin heads are attached to a single hallow, often intricately carved wooden shell. The preferred wood is jackwood, although other wood may be used...
drum of gaana
Gaana
Gaana is a type of Tamil song, often accompanied by the percussion of Dappan koothu. It is characterised as a fastbeat song, with less emphasis on meaning, sung at a celebration. Initially, this was very popular with Indians from Chennai to relax while doing stressful work. It gained further...
, rave music
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
and bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
soundtracks of Tamil film music
Tamil cinema
Tamil cinema is the film industry based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, dedicated to the production of films in the Tamil language. It is based in Chennai's Kodambakkam district, where several South Indian film production companies are headquartered...
, incorporating new styles into her avante-garde electronic dance music
Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...
. The songs, artwork and fashion of Kala have been characterized as simultaneously celebratory and infused with raw, "darker, outsider" themes, such as immigration politics, personal relationships and war. The first track from the album to be made available to the public was "Bird Flu
Bird Flu (song)
"Bird Flu" is an urumee melam song recorded by the Sri Lankan Tamil songwriter M.I.A.. It was released in 2006 and appears on her second studio album Kala, released in 2007....
", which was posted on M.I.A.'s MySpace page, with an accompanying music video, in February 2007. Later that year, M.I.A. featured in the song "Come Around", a bonus track on Timbaland
Timbaland
Timothy Zachery Mosley , better known by his stage name Timbaland, is an American record producer, songwriter and rapper....
's 2007 album Shock Value and a track on Kala. The album's first official single "Boyz
Boyz (song)
"Boyz" is a song recorded by artist M.I.A. for her second album Kala . The song was released as the album's lead single by XL Recordings and Interscope Records on 11 June 2007 in 12-inch single, CD single, digital download and USB flash drive formats...
" was released in June 2007, accompanied by a music video co-directed by Jay Will and M.I.A., becoming M.I.A.'s first top ten charting song. The single "Jimmy
Jimmy (song)
"Jimmy" is the second single from experimental electronica rap artist M.I.A.'s second album Kala , and her first single from the album in Japan...
", written about an invitation to tour genocide-affected regions in Rwanda that the singer received from a journalist while staying in Liberia, was released next. The single "Paper Planes
Paper Planes
"Paper Planes" is a song recorded by musician M.I.A. for her second studio album Kala released in 2007. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Topper Headon, Mick Jones, Wesley "Diplo" Pentz, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer and produced by Diplo with additional production by Switch...
" and the EP Paper Planes - Homeland Security Remixes EP were released digitally in February 2008, the single eventually selling three times platinum
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
in the U.S. and Canada, becoming the 29th most downloaded song in the digital era in the U.S. and earning a Grammy
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
nomination for Record of the Year
Grammy Award for Record of the Year
The Record of the Year is one of the four most prestigious Grammy Awards presented annually. It has been awarded since 1959.-History:The honorees through its history have been:*1959-1965: Artist only.*1966-1998: Artist and producer....
. In the same year, M.I.A. released the How Many Votes Fix Mix EP
How Many Votes Fix Mix EP
How Many Votes Fix Mix is the second EP released in 2008 by the musician M.I.A. . It was released on October 28, 2008 by XL Recordings/Interscope Records and made available on iTunes. It received a full release on November 4, 2008...
which included a remix of "Boyz" featuring Jay-Z
Jay-Z
Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...
.
Like its predecessor, universal acclaim met Kala's release in August 2007 and the album earned a normalised
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating of 87 out of 100 on the review aggregator MetaCritic. Kala was a greater commercial success than Arular. To support Kala, M.I.A.'s Kala Tour featuring performances in Europe, America and Asia began soon after its release. Festival appearances included Rock en Seine
Rock en Seine
The Rock en Seine festival is a two or three-day Rock 'n roll festival, held at Domaine National de Saint-Cloud, Château de Saint-Cloud's park West of Paris, inside the garden designed by Le Nôtre...
, Get Loaded in the Park, the Electric Picnic
Electric Picnic
The 2005 festival took place on Saturday 3 September and Sunday 4 September. It is best remembered for Arcade Fire's performance which came before their subsequent mainstream success...
, Connect
Connect Music Festival
The Connect Music Festival was a music festival that took place in the grounds of Inveraray Castle, located on the banks of Loch Fyne in Argyll, Scotland. It was aimed at more mature music fans and recent headliners included the Beastie Boys, Björk and Franz Ferdinand. The inaugural festival was...
, the Virgin Festival
Virgin Festival
The Virgin Fest is a rock festival held in the United States and Canada, a spin-off from the V Festival held in the UK...
s, the Osheaga Festival
Osheaga Festival
The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is a multi-day rock festival in Montreal, Quebec, that is held annually at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène every summer. The 2006 festival attracted a crowd of around 25,000 people. The second edition was held on September 8 and 9, 2007...
and Parklife Festival, and the singer performed three dates opening for Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
in the U.S. and France. M.I.A. provided guest vocals on tour supporting act Buraka Som Sistema
Buraka Som Sistema
Buraka Som Sistema is an electronic dance music project from Portugal, specializing in a fusion of techno beats with the African kuduro genre, and are generally credited with creating the "progressive kuduro" variant and have been awarded an MTV European Music Award.-Origins:Buraka Som Sistema was...
's kuduro
Kuduro
Kuduro is a type of music and dance originally born in Angola in the 1980s. It is characterized as uptempo, energetic, and danceable. Kuduro, which translates as "hard ass", began in Luanda, Angola in the late 80s...
song "Sound of Kuduro
Sound of Kuduro
"Sound of Kuduro" is a kuduro song by Buraka Som Sistema featuring DJ Znobia, M.I.A., Saborosa and Puto Prata, from their album Black Diamond released in 2008. The song was recorded in Angola, and a video for the song was recorded in 2007. "Sound of Kuduro" also appeared on the special edition of...
", recorded in Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
with an accompanying video. In the same year, M.I.A. and director Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
filmed a documentary in the immigrant neighborhood of Woolwich
Woolwich
Woolwich is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.Woolwich formed part of Kent until 1889 when the County of London was created...
, South London, where they visited Afrikan Boy
Afrikan Boy
Olushola Ajose, better known by his stage name Afrikan Boy is a grime MC from Woolwich, London, England, originally from Nigeria. He made a guest appearance on the track "Hussel" from the M.I.A. album Kala, and is one of the initial artists M.I.A. wanted signed to her label in 2007, then titled...
, a Nigerian immigrant rapper who appears on Kala track "Hussel." In Spike Jonze Spends Saturday With M.I.A., she disclosed her plans to launch her own record label, Zig-Zag, with Afrikan Boy’s track "Lidl" being its first release. She ended the year with concerts in the United Kingdom. By year end, Kala was named the best album of 2007 by publications including Rolling Stone and Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....
.MetaCritic reported in 2010 that Kala was the tenth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on Metacritic of the 2000–09 decade, one position below her debut album Arular.
M.I.A. performed on the People vs. Money Tour
People Vs. Money Tour
The People vs. Money Tour was a 2008 M.I.A. concert tour in support of her studio album Kala. Concerts also featured songs from her debut album Arular. It began on 26 April 2008 and ended on June 13 in Manchester, Tennessee....
during the first half of 2008. She cancelled the final leg of her tour in Europe through June and July after revealing her intentions to take a career break and work on other art projects, go back to college and make a film. Her last performance of the tour was at the Bonnaroo Music Festival
Bonnaroo Music Festival
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an annual four day music festival created and produced by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, held at Great Stage Park on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It hosted its tenth annual event June 9–12, 2011...
.
In 2008, M.I.A. started her record label N.E.E.T. Recordings. The first artist signed to the label was Baltimore rapper Rye Rye
Rye Rye
Rye Rye is the stage name of Ryeisha Berrain, an American rapper and dancer from Baltimore, Maryland, United States signed to N.E.E.T. Recordings. She is currently finishing work on her debut album, Go! Pop! Bang!, slated to be released some time in 2012.-Early career:Rye Rye began performing at...
, who performed with M.I.A. at the Diesel XXX party at Pier 3 in Brooklyn in October 2008 where it was revealed that M.I.A. was pregnant with her first child. M.I.A. contributed songs for A. R. Rahman
A. R. Rahman
Allah Rakha Rahman is an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and philanthropist. Described as the world's most prominent and prolific film composer by Time, his works are notable for integrating eastern classical music with electronic music sounds, world music genres and...
's score of the film Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British epic romantic drama adventure film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup...
, which included the collaboration "O…Saya"; she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song
Academy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...
and a World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film
World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film
The World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film is one of the three main prizes given by the World Soundtrack Academy to honour the best movie soundtracks...
for the song. M.I.A. was due to perform at the Oscars ceremony
81st Academy Awards
The 81st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2008 and took place February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST...
two weeks after her Grammy Award performance, but could not as she had just given birth to her son. M.I.A. is the first person of Asian descent to be nominated for an Oscar and Grammy award in the same year.
Maya: 2009–present
Seeking to promote new, underground music with N.E.E.T., M.I.A. signed more bands including Baltimore musician BlaqstarrBlaqstarr
Charles Smith, better known as Blaqstarr or DJ Blaqstarr, is a Baltimore, Maryland area rapper, singer, producer, and DJ...
, indie rock band Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells is an American noise pop music duo. The group released their debut album, Treats, on May 11, 2010.-History:Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sleigh Bells is composed of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss...
and visual artist Jaime Martinez by late 2009. 3D photographic images of M.I.A. by Martinez were commissioned in April of that year. In August 2009, M.I.A. began composing and recording her third studio album in a home studio section in her Los Angeles house. In January 2010, M.I.A. posted her video for the song "Space" from her forthcoming third album. While composing it, M.I.A. co-wrote a song with Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...
called "Elastic Love" for Aguilera's album Bionic.
By April 2010, the song and music video/short film "Born Free
Born Free (M.I.A. song)
"Born Free" is a song by recording artist M.I.A., released alongside an accompanying short film/music video of the same name from her third album, /\/\/\Y/\. "Born Free" was released as the unofficial first single from the album and premiered on internet music stores on April 23, 2010, with the...
," a song from Maya, were leaked online and later released via M.I.A.'s official website and online music stores. The video-film short was directed by Romain Gavras
Romain Gavras
Romain Gavras is a French director, best known overseas for directing M.I.A.'s controversial video for "Born Free". His films and music videos are often portrayed in a gritty and realistic manner as well as using flashing images.-Biography:...
and written by M.I.A., depicting genocide against red-haired adolescents being forced to run across a minefield and caused controversy due to its graphically violent content. Although not an official single, the song charted in Sweden and the United Kingdom. M.I.A.'s third album, Maya
Maya (M.I.A. album)
Maya is the third studio album by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A., released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings and Interscope Records. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr and Rusko...
—stylised as /\/\ /\ Y /\, a typographic equivalent of M.I.A.'s legal name—was released on 23 June 2010 in Japan with bonus tracks before its release in other countries. Maya became M.I.A.'s highest charting album globally. Originally set to be released on 29 June 2010 in the U.S., her record label announced a new release date of 13 July 2010. The album garnered a generally favourable, although divided, reception from critics. Maya was a more internet-inspired album, illustrating how a multimedia artist
Multimedia artist
Multimedia artists are contemporary artists who use a wide range of media to communicate their art. Multimedia art includes, by definition, more than one medium, therefore multimedia artists use visual art in combination with sound art, moving images and other media...
such as herself worked within the music industry. Elements of industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
were incorporated into M.I.A.'s sound for the first time. She described the album in an interview with Dazed and Confused
Dazed & Confused (magazine)
Dazed & Confused is a British style magazine, that was set up in 1992 and published monthly. Its founding editors were Jefferson Hack and Rankin...
as a mix of "babies, death, destruction and powerlessness".
The first official single from Maya, "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
", was released on 11 May 2010 and reached the top 40 in Belgium, Spain and the UK "Steppin' Up", "Teqkilla", and "Tell Me Why" were also released as promotional singles exclusively on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
in the days leading to the release of Maya, with "Teqkilla" reaching the top 100 in Canada on digital downloads alone. The video for "XXXO" was released online in August. M.I.A. hinted in an interview to Blitz
Blitz (newspaper)
Blitz is a Portuguese music newspaper. It was founded in November 1984.In July 2002, the newspaper was acquired by Impresa, which gave the newspaper access to more advanced technology, like color treatment, starting a new phase in the life of the newspaper....
that a music video is being made with director Spike Jonze for the single "Teqkilla."
M.I.A. performed at the 2010 Virgin Mobile Festival, Festival Sudoeste, Way Out West Festival
Way Out West Festival
Way Out West is a three-day music festival held in Gothenburg, Sweden, during August that plays host to a variety of popular music artists mainly from the rock, electronic and hip-hop genres...
, The Big Chill
The Big Chill (music festival)
The Big Chill is an annual festival of alternative, dance and chill-out music and comedy, held in the grounds of Eastnor Castle during early August...
, Underage Festival, Øyafestivalen
Øyafestivalen
Øyafestivalen is an annual Norwegian music festival held in Middelalderparken , Oslo. It has grown quickly since its modest start in 1999 with an audience of 1000 people in one day, and has now become one of Norway's biggest festivals....
, the Flow Festival and Rencontres Trans Musicales. She finished 2010 completing the European leg of the Maya Tour
Maya Tour
The /\/\ /\ Y /\ Tour is a 2010 global M.I.A. concert tour performed in support of her studio album Maya .-Background:...
.
From 2000–2010, she has directed the video for Elastica single "Mad Dog God Dam" and videos for her songs "Bird Flu
Bird Flu (song)
"Bird Flu" is an urumee melam song recorded by the Sri Lankan Tamil songwriter M.I.A.. It was released in 2006 and appears on her second studio album Kala, released in 2007....
", "Boyz
Boyz (song)
"Boyz" is a song recorded by artist M.I.A. for her second album Kala . The song was released as the album's lead single by XL Recordings and Interscope Records on 11 June 2007 in 12-inch single, CD single, digital download and USB flash drive formats...
", "S.U.S. (Save Ur Soul)", "Space" and "XXXO
XXXO
"XXXO" is a song by recorded by musician M.I.A. for her third studio album /\/\/\Y/\. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Charles "Blaqstarr" Smith and Cherry Byron-Withers, and produced by Blaqstarr and Rusko. "XXXO" was released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 following its...
", and a video for Rye Rye
Rye Rye
Rye Rye is the stage name of Ryeisha Berrain, an American rapper and dancer from Baltimore, Maryland, United States signed to N.E.E.T. Recordings. She is currently finishing work on her debut album, Go! Pop! Bang!, slated to be released some time in 2012.-Early career:Rye Rye began performing at...
's "Bang
Bang (Rye Rye song)
"Bang" is a song and single by rapper/dancer Rye Rye featuring M.I.A.. It was recorded in 2008 and is possibly set to appear on her 2011 album Go! Pop! Bang!. It was released in 2009 on N.E.E.T. Recordings and Interscope Records. The single was released first, followed by an EP of remixes, Bang –...
". She judged in the Music Video category at the inaugural Vimeo
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...
Festival & Awards in New York in October 2010.
M.I.A. released her second mixtape
Mixtape
A Mix Tape or Mixed Tape is a compilation of songs recorded in a specific order, traditionally onto an audio Compact Cassette.A Mix Tape, which usually reflects the musical tastes of its compiler, can range from a casually selected list of favorite songs, to a conceptual mix of songs linked by a...
, Vicki Leekx
Vicki Leekx
Vicki Leekx is a mixtape by British recording artist M.I.A. which was released on 31 December 2010. Following the release of her album Maya earlier in 2010, the artist announced via Twitter that she would be releasing a mixtape on the last day of the year, and subsequently made it available to...
, on 31 December 2010.
On 11 January 2011, Interscope released Internet Connection: The Remixes, an EP to a bonus track from Maya.
It was reported M.I.A. was in the recording studio with Swizz Beatz
Swizz Beatz
Kasseem Dean , better known by his stage name, Swizz Beatz, is an American record producer, DJ, rapper and painter. At the age of 17, he gained attention in the hip-hop world through his friendship with rapper DMX. Grady Spivey and rapper Cassidy helped launch his label Full Surface Records...
, Polow Da Don
Polow Da Don
Polow-Freache Jamal Fincher Jones , better known by known by professional name Polow da Don or Awesome Jones, is an American record producer, songwriter, rapper, and singer. His cousin is Atlanta singer Monica. He has produced for a variety of artists including Usher, Nelly, Christina Aguilera, T.I...
, Cataracs, and Chris Brown, hinting at new material for a possible fourth album.
In May 2011, M.I.A. performed on the song C.T.F.O. on SebastiAn's album Total
Total (Sebastian album)
Total is the debut album of French electronic artist SebastiAn. The album was released in Europe on May 30, 2011 and in North America on June 7, 2011 by Ed Banger Records. The album was announced in February with the release of an "X rated" teaser...
.
Music style and image
M.I.A.'s music features styles such as electro, reggaeReggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, rhythm and blues, alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
, hip hop, grime, rap ballads and Asian folk and references to her musical influences such as Missy Elliott, Tamil film music, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
, The Pixies, Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
and London Posse. She was a childhood fan of Boney M
Boney M
Boney M. is a Eurodisco group created by German record producer Frank Farian. Originally based in Germany, the four original members of the group's official line-up were Jamaicans Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams from Montserrat and Bobby Farrell from Aruba...
and pop artist Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
and has been influenced by The Slits
The Slits
The Slits were a British punk rock band. The quartet was formed in 1976 by members of the bands The Flowers of Romance and The Castrators. The members were Ari Up , who died of cancer in October 2010, and Palmolive , with Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollitt replacing founding members, Kate Korus and...
, Public Enemy, Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...
and The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
.
M.I.A. describes her music as dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
or club music for the "other", and has stressed her preference of being an "anti-popstar". M.I.A.'s early compositions relied heavily on the Roland MC-505, while later M.I.A. experimented
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
further with her established sound and drew from a range of genres, creating layered textures of instruments, electronics and sounds outside the traditional studio environment.
Jimmy Iovine
Jimmy Iovine
James "Jimmy" Iovine is an American music producer, entrepreneur and chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M.-Biography:...
, chairman of M.I.A.'s American distribution label Interscope, compares M.I.A. to Reed and punk rock songwriter Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
, and recalled, "She's gonna do what she's gonna do, I can't tell her shit." "The really left-of-center artists, you really wonder about them. Can the world catch up? Can the culture meet them in the middle? That’s what the adventure is. It doesn’t always happen, but it should and it could." Richard Russell
Richard Russell (XL Recordings)
-Career:Russell joined the independent record label XL Recordings in 1991. The label was founded in 1989 by Tim Palmer and Nick Halkes to release rave and electronic music on 12" vinyl singles....
, head of XL Recordings
XL Recordings
XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records.Though only releasing an average of six albums a year, XL Recordings has worked with The Prodigy, Radiohead, The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., Vampire...
, states, "You've got to bend culture around to suit you, and I think M.I.A has done that" adding that M.I.A.'s composition and production skills were a major attraction for him. As a vocalist, M.I.A. is recognisable by her distinctive whooping, chanting voice, which has been described as having an "indelible, nursery-rhyme swing." She has adopted different singing styles on her songs, from aggressive raps, to semi-spoken and melodic vocals. She has said of the sometimes "unaffected" vocals and delivery of her lyrics, "It is what it is. Most people would just put it down to me being lazy. But at the same time, I don’t want [that perfection]," saying some of the "raw and difficult" vocal styles she used reflected what was happening to her during recording. Sasha Frere-Jones
Sasha Frere-Jones
Sasha Frere-Jones is an American writer, music critic, and musician. He has written for Pretty Decorating, ego trip, Hit It And Quit It, Mean, Slant, The New York Post, The Wire, The Village Voice, Slate, Spin, and The New York Times...
, critic of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
praised the self made "unpretentious, stuck together with Scotch tape" style that M.I.A. achieves with her Roland MC-505 drum machine and keyboard unit, noting that many people had tried to copy the style since. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
critic Hattie Collins commented of M.I.A.'s influence, "A new rave
New Rave
New rave is a term applied to several types of music that fuse elements of electronic music, new wave, rock, indie, techno, bastard pop, breakbeat hardcore and electro house...
r before it was old. A baile funk/pop pioneer before CSS and Bonde do Rolê
Bonde do Rolê
Bonde do Rolê is a Funk Carioca-influenced electropop group from Curitiba, Brazil, consisting of MCs Pedro D'Eyrot, Laura Taylor, Ana Bernardino, and DJ/MC Rodrigo Gorky...
emerged. A quirky female singer/rapper before the Mini Allens
Lily Allen
Lily Rose Beatrice Cooper , better known as Lily Allen, is an English recording artist and fashion designer. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. In her teenage years, her musical tastes evolved from glam rock to alternative...
had worked out how to log on to MySpace. Missing In Action (or Acton, as she sometimes calls herself) has always been several miles ahead of the pack."
M.I.A.'s stage performances are described as "highly energetic", often with scenes of what Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
critic Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield is an American music journalist and author. He is currently a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, writing music reviews and essays on pop culture. Prior to that, he was a contributing editor at Blender before the print version of the magazine folded in 2009, and at Spin...
describes as "jovial chaos, with dancers and toasters and random characters roaming the stage." Camille Dodero, writing in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
opined that M.I.A. "works hard to manifest the chaos of her music in an actual environment, and, more than that, to actively create discomfort, energy, and anger through sensory overload." Her role as an artist in and voice lender to the subaltern is appreciated by theorists as having brought such ideas to first world view. USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
included her on its list of the 100 Most Interesting People of 2007 and she was named one of Time Out 's 40th Birthday London Heroes in 2008. The same year, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
listed M.I.A. as one of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st century, describing her as the first and only major artist in world music, and in 2009 she was cited in Time magazine's Time 100 as one of the world's most influential people for her global influence across many genres. In December 2010, USA Today listed M.I.A. at number 63 on its list of the "100 People of 2010". M.I.A. placed number 14 on Rolling Stones Decade-End Readers' Poll of "Top Artists Of The Decade."
Themes and artwork
M.I.A. has become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos and her cover art. Her politically inspired art became recognized while she exhibitedArt exhibition
Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...
and published several of her brightly coloured stencils and paintings portraying the tiger, a symbol of Tamil nationalism
Tamil nationalism
Tamil nationalism in India is an aspiration by some Tamils to establish, at minimum, self determination or at maximum secession from India to establish an Independent Tamil State of which would consist of today's Tamil nadu, Puducherry and Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka...
, ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and urban Britain in the early 2000s. Lyrics on Arular
Arular
Arular is the 2005 debut album by British musician M.I.A. Originally set for a September 2004 release, the album was delayed due to problems obtaining permission to use samples. Arular was finally released in the US on 22 March 2005 and a month later in the UK with a slightly different track...
regarding her experiences of identity politics, poverty, revolution, gender and sexual stereotypes, war, and the conditions of working class in London were hailed as new and unorthodox, setting her apart from previous artists. The album references the Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
and the Tamil independence movements
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is the conviction of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, a minority ethnic group in the South Asian island country of Sri Lanka , that they have the right to constitute an independent or autonomous political community. This idea has not always existed...
and features culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
, multi-lingual slang, strident and subtle imagery. Her albums' social commentary and storytelling have incited debate on the "invigoratingly complex" politics of the issues she highlighted in the album, breaking taboos while the West was engaged in the 2003 Iraq War in the Middle East. Government visits to her official website following her debut album's release in 2005, and a U.S. refusal to grant M.I.A. a travel visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
coupled with her brief presence on the U.S. Homeland Security Risk List in 2006 due to her politically charged lyrics led to her second album Kala
Kala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
being recorded in a variety of locations around the world.
Kala (album)
Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
, M.I.A.'s songs explored immigration politics and her personal relationships. Many related her experiences during recording sessions in Chennai, Angola, Trinidad shantytowns, Liberia and London, and were well acclaimed. The album's artwork was inspired by African art, "from dictator fashion to old stickers on the back of cars," which like her clothing range, she hoped would capture "a 3-D sense, the shapes, the prints, the sound, film, technology, politics, economics" of a certain time. I-D magazine described the "bleeding cacophany of graphics" on her website during this time as evoking the "noisy amateurism" of the early web, but also embodying a rejection of today's "glossy, professional site design" which was felt to "efface the medium rather than celebrate it." Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang (journalist)
Jeff Chang is an American journalist and music critic on hip hop music and culture. His 2005 book, Can't Stop Won't Stop, which chronicles the early hip hop scene, won an American Book Award in 2005...
, writing for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, described a "Kala for the Nation" and the album's music, lyrics and imagery as encompassing "everywhere—or, to be specific, everywhere but the First World's self-regarding 'here'," stating that against a media flow that suppresses the "ugliness" of reality and fixes beauty to consumption, M.I.A. forces a conversation about how the majority live, closing the distance "between 'here' and everywhere else". He felt that Kala explored poverty, violence and globalization through the eyes of "children left behind."
Her third album, Maya
Maya (M.I.A. album)
Maya is the third studio album by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A., released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings and Interscope Records. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr and Rusko...
, tackled information politics in the digital age, loaded with technological references and love songs, and deemed by Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire is the pen name of a British writer and music critic.Empire was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1970 and brought up in Canada, Italy and Egypt before arriving in Britain in 1988....
writing in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
to be her most melancholic and mainstream effort. Her genocide-depicting 2010 video for the single "Born Free
Born Free (M.I.A. song)
"Born Free" is a song by recording artist M.I.A., released alongside an accompanying short film/music video of the same name from her third album, /\/\/\Y/\. "Born Free" was released as the unofficial first single from the album and premiered on internet music stores on April 23, 2010, with the...
" was deemed by Ann Powers
Ann Powers
Ann Powers is an American writer and pop music critic.Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s...
writing in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
to be "concentrating fully" on the physical horror of gun butts and bullets hitting flesh, with the scenes giving added poignancy to the lyrical themes of the song. Interpreted as a comment on the Arizona immigration law, America's military might and desensitised attitudes towards violence, others found that the video stressed that genocide still exists and violent repression remains commonplace. Some critics described the film as "sensationalist". Neda Ulaby
Neda Ulaby
Neda Ulaby is an American reporter for National Public Radio, covering arts, cultural trends and digital media. She lives in Washington, D.C.- Early life and education :...
of NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
described the video as intended for "shock value" in the service of nudging people into considering real issues that can be hard to talk about. M.I.A. revealed that she felt "disconnected" during the writing process, and spoke of the Internet inspiration and themes of information politics that could be found in the songs and the artwork.
Her work has generated widespread acclaim. PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
writer Rob Wheaton felt M.I.A. subverted the "abstract, organized, refined" distilling of violence in Western popular music and imagination and made her work represent much of the developing world's decades-long experiences of "arbitrary, unannounced, and spectacular" slaughter, deeming her work an "assault" with realism. Some detractors criticized M.I.A. early in her music career for "using radical chic" and for her attendance of an art school. Critic Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds is an English music critic who is well-known for his writings on electronic dance music and for coining the term "post-rock". Besides electronic dance music, Reynolds has written about a wide range of artists and musical genres, and has written books on post-punk and rock...
, writing in The Village Voice in 2005 saw this as a lack of authenticity and felt M.I.A. was "a veritable vortex of discourse, around most likely irresolvable questions concerning authenticity, postcolonialism, and dilettantism". Critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
described Reynolds' argument as "cheap tack" in another article written in the publication, stating M.I.A's experiences connected her to world poverty in a way "few Western whites can grasp". He questioned why M.I.A.'s 2001 Alternative Turner Prize nominated images of pastel-washed tigers, soldiers, guns, armored vehicles, and fleeing civilians that bedeck M.I.A.'s albums and videos were now assumed or analyzed as being incendiary propaganda, suggesting that unlike art buyers, rock and roll fans were "assumed to be stupid". Reynolds later argued that M.I.A. was the "Artist of the Decade" in a 2009 issue of The Guardian. Music culture writer Michael Meyer opined that M.I.A.'s record imagery, lyrical booklets, homepages and videos supported the "image of provocation yet also avoidance of, or inability to use consistent images and messages." Instead of catering to stereotypes, he felt that M.I.A. "played with them" creating an uncategorizable and hence unsettling result. Critic Zach Baron felt that it had been shown in her career that M.I.A. had "always been adept at using a larger force against itself." M.I.A. has been hailed as demonstrating dislocation to be a "productive site of departure" and praised for her ability to transform such a "disadvantage" into a creative form of expression.
M.I.A. views her work as reflective, pieced together in one piece "so you can acquire it and hear it." She states, "All that information floats around where we are—the images, the opinions, the discussions, the feelings—they all exist, and I felt someone had to do something about it because I can't live in this world where we pretend nothing really matters." On the political nature of her songs she has said, "Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked." Censorship on MTV
Censorship on MTV
Censorship on MTV has been the subject of debate for years. MTV, the first and most popular music television network in the U.S., has come under criticism for being too politically correct and sensitive, censoring too much of their programming...
of "Sunshowers" proved controversial and was again criticized following Kala release "Paper Planes". YouTube's block and subsequent age gating/obscuring of the video for "Born Free" from Maya due to its graphic violence/political subtext was criticized by M.I.A. as hypocritical, citing the Internet channel's streaming of real-life killings. She went on to state,
"It's just fake blood and ketchup and people are more offended by that than the execution videos", referring to clips of Sri Lankan troops extrajudicially shooting unarmed, blindfolded, naked men that she had previously tweeted. Despite the block, the video remained on her website and Vimeo, and has been viewed 30 million times on the internet.
Activism
M.I.A.'s consistent addressing of several conflicts and oppressed peoples around the world, including the Tamils, Palestinians and African Americans has been both heralded and criticized. Her complete control of her output is noted by Harpers & Queen in 2005 as the primary reason for her success. M.I.A. notes that the voicelessness she felt as a child dictated her role as a refugee advocate and voice lender to civilians in war during her career, saying in an interview with music magazine ClashClash (magazine)
Clash is a popular music and fashion magazine based in the United Kingdom. Its magazine title is published 12 times a year. It has a circulation of around 40,000....
in June 2010:
M.I.A. attributes much of her success to the "homeless, rootlessness" of her early life, and is considered to be a refugee icon. The 2008 Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
's Pop Conference held in Seattle featured paper submissions and discussions on M.I.A. presented on the theme of "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change." Throughout her career, M.I.A. has used networking sites such as Twitter and MySpace to discuss and highlight the human rights abuses and war crimes Sri Lanka is accused of perpetrating against Tamils. As the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests
2009 Tamil diaspora protests
The 2009 Tamil diaspora protests refers to a series of protests and demonstrations which took place in several countries across the world, urging national and world leaders and organizations to take action on bringing a unanimous cease fire to the Sri Lankan Civil War, which had taken place for...
gathered pace, M.I.A. joined other activists in condemning the actions of the Sri Lankan government against the Tamils as a slow "systematic" genocide. She stated that international governments were privy to Sri Lanka's use of widespread censorship and propaganda on the rebellion during the island's civil war
Sri Lankan civil war
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a separatist militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil...
to aid its impunity in numerous atrocities on civilians, but had no will to end it. Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary denied that his country perpetrated genocide, responding that he felt M.I.A. was "misinformed" and that "it's best she stays with what she's good at, which is music, not politics." Consequently, she has been accused of being a "terrorist sympathiser" and "LTTE supporter" by the Sri Lankan government, whose agents have threatened listeners with prosecution if they post her music videos on the internet. Two weeks before his murder, the Tigers' Political Head B. Nadesan told Indian magazine The Week
The Week (Indian magazine)
THE WEEK is an Indian weekly newsmagazine published by The Malayala Manorama Co. Ltd. The magazine is published from Kochi and is currently printed in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kottayam. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it is the largest selling English newsmagazine in India...
that M.I.A.'s humanitarianism had been a source of strength to Eelam Tamils and fearless, knowingly amidst the "all-powerful Sri Lankan propaganda machinery that demonises any one who speaks for the Tamils." Miranda Sawyer
Miranda Sawyer
Miranda Sawyer is an English journalist and broadcaster.She grew up in Wilmslow, Cheshire with her brother Toby, who is an actor. She has a degree in Jurisprudence from Pembroke College, Oxford...
of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
felt that M.I.A. was emotional and that this could be limiting her, stating that while she was well informed, "you're not meant to get involved when giving information out about war", and that the difficulty for M.I.A. was that the world "doesn't really care." M.I.A. endorsed candidate Jan Jananayagam
Jan Jananayagam
Janani Jananayagam is a British Tamil banking professional, activist and politician. She was an independent candidate for the London region in the 2009 European Parliamentary elections.-Early life:...
at the 2009 European Parliament election
European Parliament election, 2009 (United Kingdom)
The European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2009 European Parliament election, the voting for which was held on Thursday 4 June 2009, coinciding with the 2009 local elections in England. Most of the results of the election were announced on Sunday 7 June, after...
, a last minute candidate standing on a platform of anti-genocide, civil liberties, financial transparency, the environment and women's rights, who became one of the most successful independent election candidates ever despite her loss in the general election. Death threats directed at M.I.A. and her son have followed her activism, which she also cited as an influence on the songs on her album Maya. In 2010, she condemned the Chinese Government's role in supporting and supplying arms to the Sri Lankan government during the conflict in an interview with music magazine Mondomix, stating that China's influence within the UN was preventing prosecutions of war crimes committed during the conflict.
The same year, M.I.A. voiced her fears of the influence of video game violence on her son and his generation, saying, "I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. They feel like they know the violence when they don't. Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it's like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier." In October 2009, she stated that the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
should give back his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
"like John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
sent back his MBE
MBE
MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...
." She has joked about the irony further by playing on the famous Lenon phrase "Give Peace a Chance", explaining "I'm a bit beyond being an artist who says, 'Give peace a chance.' Part of me is like, 'Give war a chance,' just to stir it up, you know what I mean?".
Prior to her 2008 Coachella festival appearance, M.I.A. filmed from her Bed Stuy apartment window and posted on YouTube an incident involving a black man being apprehended by white police officers, which in light of the Sean Bell shooting incident
Sean Bell shooting incident
The Sean Bell shooting incident took place in the New York City borough of Queens, New York, United States on November 25, 2006, when three men were shot a total of fifty times by a team of both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers, killing one of the men, Sean Bell, on the morning before his...
, elicited commentary debating the force used for the arrest.
During the recording of the album Maya, she spoke of the combined effects that news corporations and search engine Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
have on news and data collection, while stressing the need for alternative news sources that she felt her son's generation would need in order to ascertain truth. She told Nylon
Nylon (magazine)
Nylon is an American magazine that focuses on pop culture and fashion. Its coverage includes art, beauty, music, design, celebrities, technology and travel...
magazine that social networking site Facebook and Google's development "by the CIA" was harmful to internet freedom. Some criticized the claim as lacking detail.
Media portrayals of M.I.A. throughout her career have been called "problematic" by some commentators. M.I.A. confronted Pitchforkmedia over some of their writings in 2007. In 2010, criticism was directed at the New York Times, which included a tweet by M.I.A. saying "Fuck the New York Times," after the paper published controversial articles about M.I.A. and Sri Lanka. Following this, The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
published a controversial piece about M.I.A. and the conflict, employing a "sneering" tone and making many points through implication. M.I.A. and others raised concerns of misrepresentation by the magazine. They cited dichotomies between articles printed by the paper itself on the conflict as evidence of ignorance. M.I.A.'s response attracted considerable interest, due to her Twitter posting of a telephone number asking followers to ring and give feedback on the piece, the revelatory content of conversations she secretly taped, and the novelty of M.I.A. herself "turning the tables" on a yellow journalist. In 2010, she expressed disappointment that Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
distributed their documents to other news publications—including the New York Times—to gain wider coverage, as she stated their "way of reporting" did not work.
Following the 2011 United Kingdom anti-austerity protests
2011 United Kingdom anti-austerity protests
The 2011 United Kingdom anti-austerity protests were a series of anti-austerity protests that took place in the United Kingdom in early 2011...
and the 2011 London riots, during which her cousin's jewelry shop in Croydon
Croydon
Croydon is a town in South London, England, located within the London Borough of Croydon to which it gives its name. It is situated south of Charing Cross...
was attacked and looted, M.I.A. criticized the UK Government's response to the rioters as failing to address the root causes of them. She recalled the importance of a council funded youth worker
Youth Worker
A Youth worker is a person that works with young people to engage them in informal education. Youth workers can work in many contexts. In the UK and elsewhere, the main distinction is usually made between statutory, those who work as part of a government run initiative, and non-statutory, those...
she had in her school years, the use of tax money to incentivise a new business job creation program
Job creation program
Job Creation Programs are programs or projects undertaken by a government of a nation to assist unemployed members of the population in securing employment. A cornerstone of Keynesian economics, they are especially common during time of high unemployment...
amongst the working class and imprisonment conditions which encouraged consumerism. She stated that the top forty companies in Britain who banked offshore
Offshore bank
An offshore bank is a bank located outside the country of residence of the depositor, typically in a low tax jurisdiction that provides financial and legal advantages. These advantages typically include:...
should be made to pay taxes in the U.K. and "cut the poor people some slack."
Fashion and style
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
art and fashion as major influences. Her mother works as a seamstress in London. An early interest in fashion and textiles—designing confections of "bright fluorescent fishnet fabrics"—was a hallmark of her time at Central Saint Martins College
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...
. M.I.A. was a roommate of fashion designer Luella Bartley
Luella Bartley
Luella Dayrell Bartley MBE is an English fashion designer, magazine editor and former journalist based in the UK.A onetime journalist and fashion editor of British Vogue and Canada's Evening Standard newspaper, Luella Bartley first attended the prestigious further education arts college,...
and is a long-time friend of designer Carri Mundane
Carri Mundane
Carri Mundane is an English fashion designer. Born as Carri Munden, she is also credited as Carri Mundane and CassettePlaya, her fashion label. She currently works and lives in London.-Career:...
. Clothes from her limited-edition "Okley Run" line—Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
and Afrika line jackets and leggings, Islamic-inspired and water melon-print hoodies, and tour-inspired designs—were sold in 2008 during New York fashion week. She commented, "I wanted to tie all my work together. When I make an album, I make a number of artworks that go with it, and now I make some clothes that go with it too. So this Okley run was an extension of my Kala album and artwork."
Contrary to her present style, M.I.A.'s Arular era style has been described as "tattered hand me downs and patched T-shirts of indigents", embodying the "uniform of the refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
" but modified with cuts, alterations and colours to fashion a distinctly new style and apparel line. M.I.A. built on this during the Kala era with a "playful" combination of baggy t-shirts, leggings and short-shorts. She incorporated eccentric accessories in bold patterns, sparkle and "over-saturated" neon colour to fashion her signature style which inspired flocks of "garishly-clothed all-too-sassy" new-rave girls with bright red tights, cheetah-skin smock and faded 80's T- shirts. Her commodifying and performance of this refugee image has been noted to "reposition" perceptions of it in the wider public. Hailed as presenting a challenge to the mainstream with her ironic style, M.I.A. has been praised for dictating such a subcultural trend worldwide, combining "adolescent" frustrations of race and class with a strong desire to dance.
M.I.A. was once denied entry into a Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, with more than 200 retail stores in 60 countries. He has been the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997...
party, but subsequently DJed at the designer's 2008 fashion show afterparty, and modelled for "Marc by Marc Jacobs" in Spring/Summer 2008. M.I.A.'s fashion and style landed her on Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
's 10 Best Dressed of 2008. She turned down her inclusion on People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
magazine's list of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" the same year. M.I.A.'s status as a style icon, trendsetter and trailblazer is globally affirmed, with her distinct identity, style, and music illuminating social issues of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, the third world
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, and popular music. Critics point out that such facets of her public persona underline the importance of authenticity, challenging the globalized popular music market, and demonstrating music's strive to be political. Her albums have been met with acclaim, often heralded as "eclectic" for possessing a genre all their own, "packaging inherent politics in the form of pleasurable dance music." M.I.A.'s artistic efforts to connect this "extreme eclecticism" with issues of exile, war, violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
are both commended and criticized. Commentators laud M.I.A.'s use and subversion of her refugee and migrant
Human migration
Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. Historically this movement was nomadic, often causing significant conflict with the indigenous population and their displacement or cultural assimilation. Only a few nomadic...
experiences, through the weaving of musical creativity, artwork and fashion with her personal life as having dispelled stereotypical notions of the immigrant experience. This gives her a unique place in popular music, while demanding new responses within popular music, media and fashion culture. M.I.A. has been the muse of designers Donatella Versace
Donatella Versace
Donatella Versace is an Italian fashion designer and current Vice-President of the Versace Group, as well as chief designer. She owns 20 percent of the entire stock market assets of Versace. Her brother, Santo Versace, owns 30 percent...
and Alexander Wang
Alexander Wang (designer)
Alexander Wang is a Taiwanese-American fashion designer.At age 18, he moved to New York to attend Parsons The New School for Design to study fashion design. After dropping out in his sophomore year, he launched his first women's ready-to-wear collection in 2007...
and photographers David Bailey and Rankin
Rankin (photographer)
John Rankin Waddell, working name Rankin, born 1966, is a British portrait and fashion photographer.-Life and career:Waddell was brought up in St Albans, Hertfordshire. At the age of 21, whilst studying accounting at Brighton Polytechnic, he realized that his interests lay elsewhere and dropped...
.
Philanthropy
M.I.A. has funded Youth Action InternationalYouth Action International
Youth Action International Youth Action International, or YAI, is an international nonprofit working to rebuild war-torn African communities, founded by youth activist Kimmie Weeks, a survivor of the Liberian Civil War. The organization establishes safe and healthy environments for women and their...
and set up school-building projects in Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
in 2006. She supports the Unstoppable Foundation, cofunding the establishment of the Becky Primary School in Liberia. During her visit to Liberia she met the then President of Liberia, rehabilitated ex-child soldiers and appeared as part of a humanitarian mission there, hosting a "4Real" TV-Series documentary on the post war situation in the country with activist Kimmie Weeks
Kimmie Weeks
Kimmie Weeks is an internationally acclaimed human rights activist. He was born on December 6, 1981 in Monrovia, Liberia.-Early years:In 1991, Kimmie Weeks experienced the First Liberian Civil War first hand. He and his mother, Estina Ntow, were forced to leave their home and marched with many...
. Following her performance at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards
MTV Movie Awards
The MTV Movie Awards is a film awards show presented annually on MTV . It also contains movie parodies that used official movie footage with hosts and other celebrities and music performances. The nominees are decided by producers and executives at MTV. Winners are decided online by the general...
afterparty, she donated her $100,000 performance fee to building more schools in the country, telling the crowd, "It costs $52,000 to build a school for 1,000." Winning the 2008 Official Soundclash Championships (iPod Battle) with her "M.I.A. and Friends" team, 20% of the following year's championship ticket sales were donated to her Liberian school building projects. In 2009, she supported the "Mercy Mission to Vanni" aid ship, destined to send civilian aid from Britain to Vanni
Vanni (Sri Lanka)
The Vanni is the name given to the mainland area of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It covers the entirety of Mannar, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya Districts, and most of Kilinochchi District. It has an area of approximately 7,650 km2...
and controversially blocked from reaching its destination. The country's navy announced that it would fire on any ship that entered its waters, and M.I.A. was singled out on the Sri Lankan army's official website after the singer announced her support for the campaign. In 2011, following her performance at the Roskilde Festival
Roskilde Festival
Roskilde Festival is a festival held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the six biggest annual music festivals in Europe . It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer...
, she donated $250,000 from the Roskilde Festival Charity Society to help bring justice to Tamil victims of war crimes and genocide and to aid advocacy and ensure legal rights for refugees and witnesses.
Discography
- ArularArularArular is the 2005 debut album by British musician M.I.A. Originally set for a September 2004 release, the album was delayed due to problems obtaining permission to use samples. Arular was finally released in the US on 22 March 2005 and a month later in the UK with a slightly different track...
(2005) - KalaKala (album)Kala is the second studio album by British musician M.I.A., released in August 2007. The album features musical styles ranging from dance music to alternative hip hop and makes extensive use of South Asian music such as that of the urumee, a drum used in gaana music native to Tamil Nadu, India. It...
(2007) - MayaMaya (M.I.A. album)Maya is the third studio album by British-Tamil recording artist M.I.A., released in July 2010 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through XL Recordings and Interscope Records. Songwriting and production for the album were primarily handled by M.I.A., Blaqstarr and Rusko...
(2010)
Tours
- Arular TourArular TourThe Arular Tour is a global concert tour by M.I.A. performed in support of her first studio album Arular . It took place from 2005 to 2006....
(2005) - Kala Tour (2007)
- People vs. Money TourPeople Vs. Money TourThe People vs. Money Tour was a 2008 M.I.A. concert tour in support of her studio album Kala. Concerts also featured songs from her debut album Arular. It began on 26 April 2008 and ended on June 13 in Manchester, Tennessee....
(2008) - Maya TourMaya TourThe /\/\ /\ Y /\ Tour is a 2010 global M.I.A. concert tour performed in support of her studio album Maya .-Background:...
(2010)
Awards
Some awards and nominations M.I.A. has received are listed below.- Academy Award
- 2008: Nominated – Best Original SongAcademy Award for Best Original SongThe Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...
– "O…Saya"
- 2008: Nominated – Best Original Song
- Alternative Turner Prize
- 2002: Shortlisted – M.I.A. – Maya Arulpragasam
- World Soundtrack Awards
- 2009: Nominated – "O... Saya"
- ASCAP PRS Awards
- 2009: Won – "Paper Planes"
- 2009: Won – "Swagga Like Us"
- BRIT AwardsBrit AwardsThe Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...
- 2009: Nominated – British Female Solo Artist
- BET AwardsBET AwardsThe BET Awards were established in 2001 by the Black Entertainment Television network to celebrate African Americans and other minorities in music, acting, sports, and other fields of entertainment over the past year. The awards are presented annually and broadcast live on BET...
- 2009: Won – Best Female Hip Hop Artist
- 2009: Nominated – Best New Artist
- Grammy AwardGrammy AwardA Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
s- 2009: Nominated – Record of the Year – "Paper PlanesPaper Planes"Paper Planes" is a song recorded by musician M.I.A. for her second studio album Kala released in 2007. The song was written by Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam, Topper Headon, Mick Jones, Wesley "Diplo" Pentz, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer and produced by Diplo with additional production by Switch...
" - 2009: Nominated – Best Rap Song – "Swagga Like UsSwagga Like Us"Swagga Like Us" is a song by rappers T.I. and Jay-Z, released as the second single from T.I.'s sixth studio album, Paper Trail. It was slated to appear on Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3; however he later confirmed all songs with Auto-Tune were removed from the album. It was released on September 6, 2008....
"
- 2009: Nominated – Record of the Year – "Paper Planes
- Groovevolt Music & Fashion Awards
- 2005: Won – Best Alternative Album – Arular
- Mercury Music Prize
- 2005: Shortlisted – Album of the Year – Arular
- South Bank Show Awards
- 2005: Nominated – Breakthrough Award – M.I.A.
- Shortlist Music PrizeShortlist Music PrizeThe Shortlist Music Prize, stylized as , was an annual music award for the best album released in the United States that had sold fewer than 500,000 copies at the time of nomination...
- 2005: Shortlisted – Album of the Year – Arular
- 2007: Shortlisted – Album of the Year – Kala
- Q AwardsQ AwardsThe Q Awards are the UK's annual music awards run by the music magazine Q. Since they began in 1990, the Q Awards have become one of Britain's biggest and best publicised music awards, helped in no small part by the often boisterous behavior of the celebrities who attend the event...
- 2005: Nominated – Best New Act – M.I.A.
- Independent Music Awards (Canada)
- 2008: Nominated – International Album of the Year – Kala
- 2008: Nominated – International Artist/Group/Duo of the Year – M.I.A.
- UK Asian Music AwardsUK Asian Music AwardsThe UK Asian Music Awards, also known by the abbreviation UK AMA, is an award show that is held annually in the United Kingdom since 2002. It is presented by B4U Music since 2008...
- 2009: Won – Best Female Act
- SpinSpin (magazine)Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
and URB magazines' "Artist of the Year" in 2005 - Rolling StoneRolling StoneRolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
and BlenderBlender (magazine)Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....
s "Album of the Year" 2007 – Kala - USA TodayUSA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
s "100 Most Interesting People of 2007" - The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
s 2008 Pazz+Jop Poll: Singles Winner - TIMEs 2009 Top 100 World's Most Influential People
Books and further reading
Arulpragasam, Maya (2002). M.I.A. No. 10 (Paperback ed.). Pocko Editions. ISBN 1-903977-10-X- How M.I.A. (and America) Got Her Swagger Back The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
20 January 2009