M.I.A.: Flying High
Artist:
M.I.A.
No longer Missing In Action, M.I.A is signed to Interscope and has a smash on her hands. We head to Los Angeles to hang out with the UK’s coolest female rapper. Words & Image by Hattie Collins
It's 10pm and we're in Los Angeles' trendy Echoplex venue. Inside the graffitied low-rise building, black kids, gay dudes, skater boys and trendy Japanese mingle with will.i.am, Matt Damon and Interscope CEO Jimmy Iovine. But while the crowd is cutting-edge, they're not too cool to move; the second rapper M.I.A bounces onstage, they're jumping up and down like crazy heads to her baile funk, Bollywood, dancehall, electro and grime-based beats. “Shout out to the FBI in the house,” she grins later into the set before performing Sunflowers. “Like PLO I don't surrendooor...” It's controversial lyrics like this that have perhaps prevented M.I.A from entering the US until a few weeks ago.
“All I know is I was on the ‘Threat to Homelands Security’ list,” she says the next afternoon, chilling on the sun-drenched sands of Venice Beach. “You’re talking Washington, FBI and the CIA checking me out, and they know that I was running around raving in ’92, doing pills and living the London culture. We were immigrants, we didn’t have any money, my mum worked in a supermarket; I killed time how I killed time.”
Of course, her father’s controversial past may not have helped her application form either. Arul Pragasam was a founding member of EROS, a reportedly militant Tamil group in Sri Lanka, where Maya lived as a baby until returning to England when she was ten. Since the ‘70s, Sri Lanka has been at civil war so she experienced death, war and extreme poverty from a young age; circumstances made worse by the very fact of who her father was, even though she hardly saw him. “We suffered all the consequences of having him as a dad. Our houses would get extra-bombed and our people in our neighbourhood would get extra-tortured. All for this mythical dad figure that I never had.” M.I.A is insistent it’s more likely her relatives rather than her raps that caused all the red tape. “Here I am, I’ve made it, by myself, on my mum’s f*cking Tesco’s funding, and then on the last hurdle, I get f*cked over again because of my dad. That was the hardest thing for me,” she sighs.
Not being allowed into the US to record her second album, Kala, turned out to not be such a bad thing after all. After signing a US deal with Interscope, Maya was due to record with Timbaland, will i am and a host of other big-hitters. However, with no way of getting into the States, she was forced to create her own sounds. Produced by herself, with some help from Switch, Diplo and Blaqstarr, the 30 year-old travelled to India, Australia, Jamaica and Africa. The end result is a record that is about the most colourful, unusual you’ve ever heard. Imagine a patchwork quilt covered in sick. But in a good way.
Actually, she did end up working with Timbaland of course, with who she did the album closer, Come Around. “It was really great working with him, but I think I also realised that it isn’t about making a cheque-book album,” she says of the man who reportedly charges upwards of £150,000 a track. “Labels have to get used to the idea that you can’t invent this sh*t; when I worked with Timbaland, I realised that. I played him the Wilcannia Mob track (Mango Pickle Down River) and a month later, it was on the Snoop record - the exact same didgeridoo beat. So I was like, if it’s gotten to a point where I can actually influence Timbaland, as much as Timbaland can influence me, then it’s all good because I can keep on fighting, and in 20 years time I can feel satisfied that I made something I believed in.”
There’s one other guest appearance on the album in the form of Peckham’s Afrikan Boy on Hustle. “I wanted to work with him because I think he has the potential to be something really amazing, he’s really out there and unusual and different.” Talking about him brings us onto the subject of the grime scene, and their rejection of her first album, Aruler. Given how hard her life has been (“being shot at wasn’t even the main thing”), did it annoy her that they couldn’t appreciate how, well, grimy her life had been? “Not really,” she admits. “I was never really affected by it because I don’t have the time to go up to every grime kid and explain the ideology and the lifestyle. It’s too hard.” She points out that too many urban artists in this country struggle when it comes to trying to do something different. “Look at Afrikan Boy, he still has that problem. You have this talent to see something and articulate something new, but you can’t because the arena to do that doesn’t exist. It’s easier to breed movements in England than really support one artist, especially in urban culture."
You can’t accuse M.I.A of selling herself short. Despite being signed to the house of Pussycat Dolls and Nelly Furtado, you won’t see this west London-er skipping around singing someone else’s songs. And just because she’s on a major in the US (and XL over here) doesn’t mean Kala doesn’t continue to be as political as Aruler. “Progression for me wasn’t about going through the shine machine and coming out with more lipgloss. I’m a life experience artist. Jimmy Iovine really gets it. All either of us can do is watch it and wait and see if it comes together.”
Her next single, the Bollywood-boasting Jimmy is the track XL, and Interscope hope will take her to a higher level. It’s highly plausible that Jimmy could give M.I.A that much sought-after balance of cutting-edge and commercial – sell sh*tloads, yet retain your realness. And why not, she was nu-rave before it was even old, while Lily Allen could only wish she had a third of her street smarts. “Lily,” she grins wryly when the subject of UK music arises. “I really don’t know what to say. I guess she’s just lucky getting born, where she was born, to who she was born to. You can’t go wrong; she was born into a really well-set up record, basically.” She rates Amy Winehouse a whole lot more though. “Amy is really interesting. I once saw her in the street and she was really out of it, so I guess she is really living the whole thing out. I think Amy’s thing is feeling really weird about what she does, and dealing with that. It’s cool.”
Back to Jimmy, and enquiring minds want to know whom it’s about? Interscope bigwig Jimmy Iovine? Timbaland? “Oh well, yeah,” she stops suddenly. “Nah, lyrically it’s about this BBC news reporter that I was going to go on a genocide tour date with in Africa...”
It's amazing she's managed to get Kala, if not past the more open-minded XL then Interscope, a label that sells millions pushing the likes of Fifty and PCD. “Yeah,” she smiles, “I’m like ‘Hey, here’s another song I made about chickens,’ and you’re playing it to Timbaland like ‘Yeah, anyway, what you were saying about Paris Hilton is really good, and I would love to sing like that, but I’m going to come back in two weeks and we’ll do this.’”
She switches subjects by returning to talk about how she, a girl from war-torn Sri Lanka by way of an estate in west London, ended up doing so well. “It took 17 years for me to come from a mud hut to signing with Interscope records,” she points out. “I just got so lucky with the people I met and inspired me. In fact, I want to highlight that I’m just the lucky one that got to be here,” she decides, sitting back on the sand. “That’s it; I just got lucky.”
Kala is out on XL Recordings now.
M.I.A to attempts a World Record: Longest Distance Flown By A Paper Aircraft.
The record is currently held by America Stephen Krieger who managed distance of 63.19 m (207 ft 4 in) in a hangar on 6 September 2003. While M.I.A put in a valiant effort, she unfortunately fell about 61 metres short!
RWD Magazine
MySpace.com/mia
No longer Missing In Action, M.I.A is signed to Interscope and has a smash on her hands. We head to Los Angeles to hang out with the UK’s coolest female rapper. Words & Image by Hattie Collins
It's 10pm and we're in Los Angeles' trendy Echoplex venue. Inside the graffitied low-rise building, black kids, gay dudes, skater boys and trendy Japanese mingle with will.i.am, Matt Damon and Interscope CEO Jimmy Iovine. But while the crowd is cutting-edge, they're not too cool to move; the second rapper M.I.A bounces onstage, they're jumping up and down like crazy heads to her baile funk, Bollywood, dancehall, electro and grime-based beats. “Shout out to the FBI in the house,” she grins later into the set before performing Sunflowers. “Like PLO I don't surrendooor...” It's controversial lyrics like this that have perhaps prevented M.I.A from entering the US until a few weeks ago.
“All I know is I was on the ‘Threat to Homelands Security’ list,” she says the next afternoon, chilling on the sun-drenched sands of Venice Beach. “You’re talking Washington, FBI and the CIA checking me out, and they know that I was running around raving in ’92, doing pills and living the London culture. We were immigrants, we didn’t have any money, my mum worked in a supermarket; I killed time how I killed time.”
Of course, her father’s controversial past may not have helped her application form either. Arul Pragasam was a founding member of EROS, a reportedly militant Tamil group in Sri Lanka, where Maya lived as a baby until returning to England when she was ten. Since the ‘70s, Sri Lanka has been at civil war so she experienced death, war and extreme poverty from a young age; circumstances made worse by the very fact of who her father was, even though she hardly saw him. “We suffered all the consequences of having him as a dad. Our houses would get extra-bombed and our people in our neighbourhood would get extra-tortured. All for this mythical dad figure that I never had.” M.I.A is insistent it’s more likely her relatives rather than her raps that caused all the red tape. “Here I am, I’ve made it, by myself, on my mum’s f*cking Tesco’s funding, and then on the last hurdle, I get f*cked over again because of my dad. That was the hardest thing for me,” she sighs.
Not being allowed into the US to record her second album, Kala, turned out to not be such a bad thing after all. After signing a US deal with Interscope, Maya was due to record with Timbaland, will i am and a host of other big-hitters. However, with no way of getting into the States, she was forced to create her own sounds. Produced by herself, with some help from Switch, Diplo and Blaqstarr, the 30 year-old travelled to India, Australia, Jamaica and Africa. The end result is a record that is about the most colourful, unusual you’ve ever heard. Imagine a patchwork quilt covered in sick. But in a good way.
Actually, she did end up working with Timbaland of course, with who she did the album closer, Come Around. “It was really great working with him, but I think I also realised that it isn’t about making a cheque-book album,” she says of the man who reportedly charges upwards of £150,000 a track. “Labels have to get used to the idea that you can’t invent this sh*t; when I worked with Timbaland, I realised that. I played him the Wilcannia Mob track (Mango Pickle Down River) and a month later, it was on the Snoop record - the exact same didgeridoo beat. So I was like, if it’s gotten to a point where I can actually influence Timbaland, as much as Timbaland can influence me, then it’s all good because I can keep on fighting, and in 20 years time I can feel satisfied that I made something I believed in.”
There’s one other guest appearance on the album in the form of Peckham’s Afrikan Boy on Hustle. “I wanted to work with him because I think he has the potential to be something really amazing, he’s really out there and unusual and different.” Talking about him brings us onto the subject of the grime scene, and their rejection of her first album, Aruler. Given how hard her life has been (“being shot at wasn’t even the main thing”), did it annoy her that they couldn’t appreciate how, well, grimy her life had been? “Not really,” she admits. “I was never really affected by it because I don’t have the time to go up to every grime kid and explain the ideology and the lifestyle. It’s too hard.” She points out that too many urban artists in this country struggle when it comes to trying to do something different. “Look at Afrikan Boy, he still has that problem. You have this talent to see something and articulate something new, but you can’t because the arena to do that doesn’t exist. It’s easier to breed movements in England than really support one artist, especially in urban culture."
You can’t accuse M.I.A of selling herself short. Despite being signed to the house of Pussycat Dolls and Nelly Furtado, you won’t see this west London-er skipping around singing someone else’s songs. And just because she’s on a major in the US (and XL over here) doesn’t mean Kala doesn’t continue to be as political as Aruler. “Progression for me wasn’t about going through the shine machine and coming out with more lipgloss. I’m a life experience artist. Jimmy Iovine really gets it. All either of us can do is watch it and wait and see if it comes together.”
Her next single, the Bollywood-boasting Jimmy is the track XL, and Interscope hope will take her to a higher level. It’s highly plausible that Jimmy could give M.I.A that much sought-after balance of cutting-edge and commercial – sell sh*tloads, yet retain your realness. And why not, she was nu-rave before it was even old, while Lily Allen could only wish she had a third of her street smarts. “Lily,” she grins wryly when the subject of UK music arises. “I really don’t know what to say. I guess she’s just lucky getting born, where she was born, to who she was born to. You can’t go wrong; she was born into a really well-set up record, basically.” She rates Amy Winehouse a whole lot more though. “Amy is really interesting. I once saw her in the street and she was really out of it, so I guess she is really living the whole thing out. I think Amy’s thing is feeling really weird about what she does, and dealing with that. It’s cool.”
Back to Jimmy, and enquiring minds want to know whom it’s about? Interscope bigwig Jimmy Iovine? Timbaland? “Oh well, yeah,” she stops suddenly. “Nah, lyrically it’s about this BBC news reporter that I was going to go on a genocide tour date with in Africa...”
It's amazing she's managed to get Kala, if not past the more open-minded XL then Interscope, a label that sells millions pushing the likes of Fifty and PCD. “Yeah,” she smiles, “I’m like ‘Hey, here’s another song I made about chickens,’ and you’re playing it to Timbaland like ‘Yeah, anyway, what you were saying about Paris Hilton is really good, and I would love to sing like that, but I’m going to come back in two weeks and we’ll do this.’”
She switches subjects by returning to talk about how she, a girl from war-torn Sri Lanka by way of an estate in west London, ended up doing so well. “It took 17 years for me to come from a mud hut to signing with Interscope records,” she points out. “I just got so lucky with the people I met and inspired me. In fact, I want to highlight that I’m just the lucky one that got to be here,” she decides, sitting back on the sand. “That’s it; I just got lucky.”
Kala is out on XL Recordings now.
M.I.A to attempts a World Record: Longest Distance Flown By A Paper Aircraft.
The record is currently held by America Stephen Krieger who managed distance of 63.19 m (207 ft 4 in) in a hangar on 6 September 2003. While M.I.A put in a valiant effort, she unfortunately fell about 61 metres short!
RWD Magazine
MySpace.com/mia
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