M.I.A. Quotes

I think I just kind of thought about all the artists that I really respected throughout the - just any genre of music really and I think everybody that I respected and liked. They were just them. You know, they're people who always stuck to who they were, and were true and honest about who they were. So I think that kind of gave me a real like confidence to just stick at it. Just thinking about people like Bjork - you know, I don't know, Bob Dylan, you know artists that truly were strong in themselves.

Can I get Control?
Do you like me Vulnerable?
I'm armed and I'm equal
More fun for the people...

I didn't want to make huge political statements; in fact, I hate preachy shit and people saying, 'This is good; this is bad.' I talk about how I see things as an everyday person in England. I was saying things that were a bit controversial, and I wanted to say that there are some opinions that aren't black and white. Things are confusing and complex. If you really want to be a good person, you understand things from all points of view and you are empathetic towards every opinion and every voice. I was like, 'I'm going to make an album about how it's difficult to make sense of living today, and that is added to by the television and the media, the person at my bank and the person at my mobile phone company.' I want to make sense of all those people and what is going on, and that is what I tried to do lyrically, and not provide a manifesto.

My approach to politics is that I never said I'm smart. But why aren't I allowed to write about my experience?

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."

M.I.A.: He looks like he always has gel in it. Hold on. [to taxi driver] Can you pull over, please? I’m at Notting Hill Gate station.

I call bullshit on any system that holds me down. If the system changed my life the way it did and it totally abused my life and my family, then I’m willing to stand up against it. My goal is to bring people into the system. If I have to use some shocking imagery or if I have to use some honest up-front language to get in and wake people up, so be it. At least, it has sparked up some discussion and young people feel like they have the right to talk. That’s all you can hope for, to induce discussion and then make people feel like they have the right to discuss political issues.

I performed at a show at the MoMA. There was this big dinner there, and I was seated in this hall with the mayor of New York and all these extremely wealthy art-supporting and art-buying people. There was a piece of work hanging in the hall-it was a fan. This fan was supposed to swing by the momentum of its own propeller. So, while we were having dinner, the fan was stopped, and the guy next to me, a curator at P.S.1, said, "Look, this is what art symbolizes today." Like, that piece of art is supposed to be moving, but just to have dinner we've stopped the art. That's what New York is like today. You can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.

He asked my mum, 'Why would I devote myself to one woman and three children when I could be helping thousands?' She said: 'If you even have to ask that, you should go.'One of those times, when he came home, he didn't even know what I was called.

M.I.A.: I’d love to raid his wardrobe.

Who the hell is huntin' you? In the BMW
How the hell they find you? 1 4 7'd you
Feds gonna get you
Pull the strings on the hood
One Paranoid you
Blazing through the Hood.

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?

It's good. You know, it's nice coming out and actually meeting all your fans - you make this thing in your bedroom and you don't really know who is going to get it or relate to it or anything, you know? And you just pour your heart out kind of thing, and then you find out you relate to people and that's the final process of it. You know, to meet people who are actually like you and that you connect with, you know what I mean? That's kind of cool. That's the best thing about touring.

M.I.A.: No. My fashion icon is Colonel [Muammar al-] Gaddafi, and he always has been. He’s rock ’n’ roll.

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....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.