‘Could you please come get me?’ 
M.I.A. says she used to work in a telemarketing call center selling software over the phone (thanks, Punjabi Boy). Could you get any more desi?
… she was working in a call centre selling computer software to people in Ohio. She’d once worked the same job in LA.
The strain of being so mainstream drove her into Compton 
… having fallen in love with hip-hop, she was going to move to South Central LA and become a gangsta’s bitch. It was a move both rebellious and reactionary. ‘I’m glad I went that far into it. I was the best hoochie on the West Coast at the time. I had the best clothes ‘cos I was coming from England and really good at shoplifting. I had Versace on before Lil’ Kim started rapping about it ‘cos the only place I could steal at was Harvey Nicks, where it was sooo easy. So I studied, like, the whole thing out in Compton: how the best you could do is be there for your man, be really good at sex, throw barbecues in the park, have babies and keep that unit together with the money that you get.’
Sadly, her black audiences aren’t getting her — she’s not quite Maya Vanilli, but gangsta isn’t totally prêt-à -porter:
This audience don’t understand why she’s covered head to toe in a baggy Sri Lankan print blouse and billowy trousers with its flashes of green in the print, which turn out, on closer inspection, to be the Incredible Hulk’s fist.
But she does have compelling memories of poverty in Sri Lanka:
… malnutrition had left Maya without most of her teeth. One of her last childhood memories of Sri Lanka is having her gums cut open with rice grain. ‘They don’t even do it fast, it took 45 minutes. But I wanted teeth so bad … you don’t understand.’ She came to Britain waiting for them to grow in and would hold her lips over her gums, staring long hours at herself in the mirror.
I suppose ‘terrorist’ isn’t usually mentioned in the biodata:
… her mother met her father through an arranged marriage, having been told he was an engineer. ‘Ever since she was a baby she was raised to be the housewife that all Sri Lankan women are meant to be. She couldn’t play out the fantasy ‘cos she didn’t have a husband. Him going away was worse for her. All the women were like, “He didn’t even die? He just left you with two children, what’s wrong with you? Fuck him starting a revolution, he isn’t at home!”‘
The girls were raised as if their father were dead. The founder of Eros (Eelam Revolutionary Organisation), he trained with the PLO in Lebanon, and was in one of four different factions set up in the Seventies to try to achieve an independent Tamil state for the tear-shaped island in the Indian Ocean. The Tigers were the largest group, but every time Sri Lanka got close to peace the four would fight over who would become leader of the Tamil nation. Thousands of boys died at the hands of the Tigers.
‘The Tigers killed two groups off, leaders and kid soldiers included. When it came to my dad’s group he said, “I don’t want to kill off all these boys for the sake of an ideal.” He gave up and walked away, and Eros eventually disintegrated.’
The tomboy finally blossomed:
Her mother… recently became a born-again Christian…She was also the smallest kid in the whole school, let alone her year. ‘I had short hair and everyone thought I was a boy until I was 16. My sister was gorgeous, she looked like Neneh Cherry. Light-skinned, red lipstick, corkscrew curls. West Londoners, east Londoners, they’d hang outside school to look at her. She’d be like, “Maya, can you just go and hide?” ‘
I guess tamil tigers have a wicked sense of humor. Who would have guessed…
and she still effn supports them? even though she knows this?
I love her, but this is sort of how she misses the point sometimes…like being a gansta bitch is not what Black music is about.
But I know exactly why she gravitated toward and enjoyed being “the princess of the hood.” When White people make you feel hideous all the time, well, shit you’re going to take your dark self elsewhere then…
God love her for calling bullshit without fear:
And what’s with the constant references to her “tiny hands” and “little ears”? Condescending, much?
So she wears pegasus ear-rings and has Incredible Hulk fists on her pants? so? what?
It’s like they’re STILL in shock that a woman who doesn’t wear some crap stylist-approved getup and who makes this huge stand for the world outside Brit-American borders has actually made a name for herself. Must make her smaller so she’s more manageable.
dang. At the rate she keeps confusing/impressing me, I’m well on my way to being her bitch.
A terrorist group called “Eros”? Dang – are you sure this isn’t a rap video already?
If you don’t speak English, you’re not going to worry about what else your translated acronym means. Hope that makes sense, Beavis.
Heh heh. Heh heh. You said “acronym”
Seriously – they didn’t speak English? I figured they would have, if only to communicate with their PLO trainers. Also, usually somebody who founds a group like Eros, and has enough pull to get international training, would have learned some English along the way, no?
Maybe they were going for a different effect. Something erudite and Shakespearian, like:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and EROS of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep”
That would have worked for a revolutionary group too.
yah yah. I so see that. Quite witty, using Shakespear-ji to offset juvenile preoccupations. Your Amma was so right, a well-rounded education is so useful!
You wound me grievously, Miss. Is there any nobler pre-occupation than that of love? I would it were my occupation and my post-occupation as well, but alas, we see little love in post-occupation anywhere.
Harden not your heart so.
from the interview:
Taco Bell? My respect for her has just skyrocketed. Through the roof.
ak, did you get the part where, “She slurps unhappily at her jumbo drink” ?? 🙂
she wears winged horses on her ears and guzzles caloric soft-drinks.
I’m having such a satisfying “revenge of the nerds” moment. She’s like me, back when I was in high school. Only I got laughed at.
off to find old yearbook and sneer at all the mean girls
Theo – my heart is like a congealed Salad. You can melt it, but I don’t think you’d wanna try.
I sure did — especially given the priceless context of her slurping:
revenge of the nerds indeed.
(though i sometimes worry that the nerds have left me behind in the process of getting revenge. in high school, i lived in constant fear of getting laughed at just because i was south asian, and often for no other reason. now, thanks to the “desi chic” moment we live in, i live in constant fear of getting laughed at for not being a hip enough south asian. at least for the next 15 minutes. who knows, maybe we’ll hear them playing bhangra at the 2008 republican national convention, in which case i’ll know that we’re completely passe.)
Who’s the British transsexual reggae-singing dude?
Boy George
Amen to your top post cicatrix! Too many people don’t get that one segment of Compton is just that…not our whole entire culture!!! But, if you’re not fittin’ in w/ the white folx come on over to the cookout!
At any rate,I’m going to see her in a couple of weeks in DC. I was addicted to her CD for several weeks straight. How’s her show?
thanks gatamala! Things are much better with the white folks but I’d love to come to your cookout! If ya’ll are frying in an oil drum, maybe we can make turducken?? (mmmmm)
Show was awesome. Here’s a Central Park Sepia review.
Just watched her on the Mercury Awards prize – she didnt win – this weird spooky man at a piano with a high voice won – but they did a five minute profile and interview with her and she told her life story and said her music is about refugee vibes and the story of her life from a mud hut in Sri Lanka to a council estate in London – she also talked about all the terrorism thing and said she doesnt dig terrorism or glorify it but she just raps about life and reality and conflict in a big jumble which is what the world is.
She is sexy and supafly and doesnt really have a strong London cockney accent which I thought she would – she also made a speech saying how her music is about England because it is all the dancehall Jamaican London mash up mix up multiculture vibe thing going on.
Anthony and the Johnsons won? What?!
Mercury-effn-we-don’t-bend-to-pressure-shitslice-prize
whatever. She’d probably disappear faster that, ehm, Gomez, ehm, M People.
Speaking of which, what’s Talvin done lately anyway?
sour grapes taste sour
cicatrix
Yeah that was his name – really tall chubby pale skinned dressed like a goth and sings like a castrato suicide music. He scared me a little – it sounds like 3am music why doesnt anyone love me I’m so miserable music – with a piano. I cant believe anyone would prefer that torch song caterwauling to dang-di-dang-diddy-dangalang-galang-rangy-dangy-London-calling-all-the-girls-say-wha-wha-meet-the-gang-now
Cica & PB- it’s probably the same punters who like David Hasselhoff…
shudders
Gawd… this woman is a total joke. An absolute f*cking, walking fetish
Bad enough she fetishizes black culture and black music to be about Compton and Versace… Its an a absolute travesty to fetishize the LTTE, after all the destruction they wrought. I’m no fan of Bandaranaike or Sinhala nationalism, but this is an organization that has repeatedly brought what could be a functional nation to its knees, killed scores of and scores of people from great leaders to innocent children and generally represents the worst sort of nihilism.
Screw moral relativism, this woman is an outrage
i cant believe anthony and the johnsons won, thats sort of great
its scary that she went to compton to live out a fetish. there’s a lot about her that screams fetish. she’s barely a good artist. if not judging by her backstory, her lyrics suck, her music isn’t that great, but i’d dance to it and its got some kind of sexual energy to it, and i admire her for getting this far
as far as her politics i think they are more complex than one would think bc they seem to be the result of some pretty serious personal experiences. not to dwell, but i would think that going to compton to become a fetish and live out a fetish would create a lot to think about
i don’t even think it was a mistake, it just is
and it massively annoys me that she’s a walking fetish and no one says a thing
I was at a Brit Asian musician’s flat last night while his wife watched the Mercury Awards and he just went OFF on MIA, calling her a completely manufactured product. “Where was she the past few years? Has anyone ever said that they saw her MCing or playing gigs before she got big? No, because she’s an invention of record label execs who needed something Asian.” His wife simply theorizes that MIA doing music is “just another art project” for her, and that moving to Compton probably was too. Heh.
What is it with browns and EROS.
I’d be amused if one of the stores she shoplifted sent her a bill, due to this interview.
Shoplifting is SO ’80s
Epoch– that shady video group pronounces theirs “er-ROSS”, not “AIR-rohs”…
M.I.A. is sri lankan or tamil? dey r difo…her music is kinda strange…meh
I don’t know about the rest of you, but M.I.A. is a woman I want to meet. A beautiful woman I want to meet.