M.I.A.: On Her Own Terms

The English rapper continues taking up causes that no one will care about on her most personal record to date.

- Riddhi Chakraborty

Maya Arulpragasam Aka M.I.A. is on a mission to-wards world peace with her fifth, and possibly final, studio album AIM. “I think my work is often about building bridges between the East and the West,” says the English rapper and producer over the phone while on a (not-so) secret visit to India last month to shoot a music video. M.I.A.’s outspokenness has burnt as many bridges as it has tried to build she’s been denied the US visa for her perceived support for a ‘terrorist’ organization in Sri Lanka, her comments on Black Lives Matter, saying that Muslim and Syrian lives matter too, cost her a headlining slot at the Afro punk festival in London and there seems to be a general air of controversy around her.

The backlash she spawns every now and then has everything to do with the for midable lyrical force she is: the themes in her spit fire debut album Arular in 2004 covered everything from the Tamil independence movement, the Iraq war to her own day-to-day life and the cultural struggles of growing up as a Sri Lankan in London even as she traversed a curious sonic scape of hip-hop, electro-funk and punk.