MIA

M.I.A.’s New Soft and Hard Video for “P.O.W.A.” Is Here

February 8, 2017

Coming back with POWA POWA. Maya Arulpragasam is serving up looks in her new video for “P.O.W.A.” The video opens on M.I.A., veiled like a street-smart Virgin Mary and laying amongst thousands of blossoms, as she rides in the back of a pickup truck snaking up mountain roads. It’s a hyper-saturated dreamscape with a driving electric … Read More

M.I.A. Released a New Version of “A.M.P.”

January 23, 2017

It’s got lots of clapping. In the early hours of Sunday, M.I.A. tweeted out the link for her remix of “A.M.P. (All My People)” of her latest album A.I.M. The track, which was “requested by fans,” features a much more upbeat backing to the original song. Listen to it below. https://medium.com/media/a1d7aac274eeb0f44a60d542c65b4f5d/hrefhttps://medium.com/media/a1d7aac274eeb0f44a60d542c65b4f5d/href

What M.I.A.’s Comments About BLM Say About South Asian Solidarity

April 21, 2016

  This morning, Brit-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. was reported as saying in the current issue of ES Magazine that Black Lives Matter is a limited movement. “It’s not a new thing to me — it’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say … Read More

New Banger From M.I.A. ‘MIA Ola’ Samples From Disney’s ‘Circle Of Life’

March 17, 2016

Today Tamil Superhero M.I.A. released a new song on her soundcloud called “Mia Ola.” The track samples from the iconic “Circle of Life” from Disney’s Lion King. https://medium.com/media/df823ae39917559cff2e546a8ddb3495/hrefhttps://medium.com/media/df823ae39917559cff2e546a8ddb3495/href She released the song with the caption “OLA TO ALL MY FLYPIRATES and DJS — THIS IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT !!!! LIVE FROM THE MEXICAN BORDER OLA !!!! MIA ON THE WAVES Miauk — Mia-ola. … Read More

Embodying the Refugee in M.I.A’s “Borders”

January 12, 2016

Anyone familiar with MIA knows she has never been shy about politicizing pop music– from rapping about snipers profiling their victims in “Sunshowers” to shocking us with evocations of the Tamil genocide in “Born Free” to mocking the Saudi regime’s restrictions on women drivers in “Bad Girls.” Her most recent, and self-directed, music video for … Read More

Swords/Warriors Mix

July 22, 2015

M.I.A. released her “Matahdatah Scroll 01 Broader Than a Border” video and EP last week, prompting a renewal of the 10 year-long cycle that has been her career and discography. The songs on this EP feature swords clashing and spiritual singing, and M.I.A. is taking us back to the beginning when her sound was less … Read More

The Trajectory of M.I.A.

M.I.A. came out of nowhere with her Clash samplings and bleached bangs. It was like I had gone to sleep one night and woken up in a new world where she was playing in the school hallways off of Razor cell phones and classmates were catching me up to ask if I had heard of … Read More