I haven't heard honesty in music for so long and this is how I feel, and this is what I think. You don't even have to say words … I was just being as… - M.I.A.

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

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.

I saw firsthand where the music we made ended up. It turned up in sterile bullshit clubs in LA, separated from the spirit we made it in.