What's Up With

... M.I.A.?

by Dirty South Joe

Age: 29

Hometown: London/Sri Lanka.

On the power of music: “Music is cheap and instant. You can use it to neurolinguistically program ideas into people's minds. It can be used to condition generations of people and give them cultural references that point in the right direction. Unfortunately, we've been conditioned to accept that girls grow up to be hos and boys grow up with guns.”

On album inspiration: “My first album [Arular] was about my father's revolutionary ideals, about him turning to my mom and asking, ‘Do you want me to stay here and take care of you and three kids, or do you want me to save lives and take care of thousands of people?' This one is about my mom and her struggle—how do you work, feed your children, nurture and love them and give them the power of information? The numerous wars being fought right now run parallel to the destruction that plagues the home. The lack of structure, role models and time for family is a tragedy.”

On being kept out of the U.S. for eight months: “I still don't know if I was singled out or if it was random. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn't get on people's tracks here or work with any of the producers I had lined up. I'm pissed off about the whole thing, but it shaped my record into what it is. It gave me so much more. I recorded in India and every country that was anti-American. I wasn't gonna just sit and wait. Now I feel like I could produce the shit outta anything. It forced me to go to these places on my own—without management, lawyers, anyone. There aren't any other girls in the world making music like that—going out and making music with strangers, living among the rats and cockroaches, getting people outside the music community involved in projects.”

On sacred middle ground: “I'm listening to a lot of Indian music lately. Also some soca and reggaeton. Music is both simple and complicated mathematics. Western music works on two scales—major and minor. South Indian music is made up of 72 different scales. The music that theoretically lies halfway between hasn't happened yet. All the Indian musicians were so super-complicated that I couldn't get a single person in a room of 30 drummers to play a 4/4 beat. At the same time they can put so much emotion into an eternal-seeming loop that moves so constantly and powerfully. I'm trying to find the sound in between.”