M.I.A.

M.I.A.: Oh my gosh, so much shit. It’s the most amazing place in the world. Argentina is really poor every since they had that weird bank freezing episode in the beginning of 2000 or whatever. Since then all the middle class people all turned really poor as because the government froze all the bank accounts. 60 percent of the population is below the poverty line. So it’s got this crazy thing like “if you’re rich here, you’re filthy rich and if you’re not, you’re fucked. If you’re poor there’s nothing for you to do here. There are no jobs. There’s nothing.” So it seems to be like the best of art or any sort of expression really.

M.I.A.: No. I don’t sing until tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to see Kings of Leon play with The Strokes.

M.I.A.: I don’t really know too much about what’s going on. It just started in Rio when I was Brazil. I had no idea I was on MTV.

M.I.A.: No, I have a DJ. I didn’t come to music as an expert. I never knew how to play a single instrument. I didn’t know anything about music. I feel like I came into the music industry as a complete outsider. I just entered it because I was a music lover and I was listening to it and I knew what sound I liked. Now when I do my live shows, that’s what I try and give people. I can come here with a DJ and try and make it like a club night kind of show. If the audience wants to stand there and stare at me, that’s cool, but it’s really about everybody dancing and having a good time.

M.I.A.: When I was really young in Sri Lanka I listened to Indian music and film soundtracks and stuff. Then when I came to England I started listening to dance music and hip hop and that’s where I’m coming from now. Since then anything that’s got a good rhythm to it that makes people move I really like, no matter what genre of music it is.

M.I.A.: I do it for fun but I can’t professionally dance. I dance when I’m in a club and stuff because the music makes me move but it’s also fun like dancing with boys. That’s why I do it.

M.I.A.: No, I didn’t even have a computer. But now everything’s happening to me and I can afford one. I was really ignorant to the whole thing especially in England because that’s just not how we do things. England wasn’t playing me on the radio and stuff. When I first put the song out they just didn’t care for it. They said stuff like, we don’t know where you’re coming from because we found out you’ve got an education. We don’t know how hood you are. Then it was the whole thing that happened with me in England. The internet people loved the fact that I was into so much different shit. I think at the time people were looking for an artist that they can deconstruct on a political level or a social level or a poverty level or an ethnic level or a musical level. All those subjects that English radio told me they didn’t like me for. It wasn’t hip hop, it wasn’t dancehall and it wasn’t indie music. People were like, “Wow. This is new. This is great that it’s not part of that. It’s great it’s not marketed. It’s great she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. It’s great she fucks up and puts her music out before she releases it and people are downloading it.” I think that’s what happened.

M.I.A.: I don’t know if there’s a backlash because I actually do come from Sri Lanka. I do come from a background where people need money. Do I not take the money because of credibility or do I turn around and go, “Fuck this. I’m going to take the money and give it to like 20,000 fucking people that need it.” In India my uncle took this one guy who was begging outside a hotel and bought him a rickshaw. With one rickshaw, this guy he earned three pounds a day and paid my uncle back one pound. He can still maintain a family on that money. When I went there to India, he picked me up and he was driving me around. He had my uncle’s name on his taxi and my uncle never told me about any of this. Then this guy took me to the house. I met his kids and everything. That moment I really realized that is how simple it is. This guy used to be on the side of the streets begging every day. With the money that I got from Honda, I could do that for 25 families which is pretty amazing.

I don’t give a shit about credibility because I know at the end of the day I’m an artist and I always push myself. I already have people like Timbaland, The Neptunes and Missy Eliott on my sound. They like it and they’re really inspired by it. So I feel like as an artist I’m never going to make money off my own work. I’m never going to do it. I know that an artist like Gwen Stefani can come up and do a song like me and get to number one. But I can’t physically do that because there are so many issues attached to how much I play the game.

M.I.A.: No, I don’t think it’s a ripping me off thing. I feel like I’m an artist’s artist. There are loads of artists who like me and who get inspired by stuff. But I’m never going to be somebody who ends up on the Christmas jingle. I’m not that pop because I like having a real life. I like being on the bus everyday and I like hanging out. I like sleeping on people’s couches. I don’t ever want to lose that. There’s only so much I can do as an artist to get my shit out there.

M.I.A.: No. It wasn’t like that at all. I just met him one day when I was a student in London and he asked me to come and work on a film he was making in LA.
I never ended up going

M.I.A.: I think I was always slightly political but my issues change with what’s going on in my life. Politics is something that I’ve never been able to discuss with anyone and everyone. I did everything I could to give myself the opportunities that middle class people had. My life in England for the first ten years wasn’t really political. It was more about getting an equal shot as the next person. I wanted a shot at an education. I wanted to be able to walk into a place and get a job. I didn’t want people to discriminate against me because I had a hood accent. I had a hood accent because I learned English in the hood. Politics came back to me after I went back to Sri Lanka. Once I studied and wanted to be a filmmaker, I tried to make a documentary on what it was like to be a young person in Sri Lanka. I wanted to make a film that could compare the 19-year-olds in Sri Lanka. That’s when I came across so much politics.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck