Another New (actually much better) Article on M.I.A.

 Maybe I should just turn this into an M.I.A. fan blog!  Anyway, I hope people will bear with me…as I mention another new M.I.A. article, this time in  Fact Magazine… I think this article and the interview material it contains are downright fascinating.  Here’s an excerpt:

Do you think that most American hip-hop has lost that raw edge?

“Yep, because it’s a business….   When hip-hop came out, white people were the ones rolling in big cars, with ladies and panthers on a leash…it was like Rod Stewart or whatever.  Then the pendulum swings to some kid in the hood, wearing shorts stood next to a speaker by the lamppost, making music.  Now hip-hop is Rod Stewart.  The pendulum isn’t now gonna swing back to some kid on the street by the speaker in America, it’s gonna swing to somewhere in Africa, or China.  Because that’s what we haven’t heard yet.”  

Much like ‘Arular’, your new album is politicised, but this time around you have to listen more carefully to the lyrics to hear it…

“I know…that’s the weirdest thing.  I know that about my record, and kinda know that about me…’cos it’s like that with my artwork and everything that I’m doing, that I’ve decided that that’s what I am.  Everything exists in layers, culturally, visually, information wise, it’s just one big layering process.  I couldn’t get away from that.  Every song is like that.  It’s not like I recorded one song in India, and one song here, and one song there.  That could’ve been a really contrived, and probably quite easy, way of doing it.  I wish I could’ve stuck to it.  But it didn’t end up like that; every song has been made in every single country.  It’s got New York, Virginia, Baltimore, America and England, but at the same time those songs were also worked in India and Trinidad and Africa.  It’s like one big marble cake that you cut and slice.”

Do you think people are more willing to embrace a political record now than they were a few years ago?

“It doesn’t matter…the thing is, you have to reflect your life.  I have to be true to that – I can’t take certain things away.  I do have a political background.  I’m only in England, learning this language and building a life in this society, because of political reasons.  Why would I deny that?…”