MIA Leaves Singing About Sex To Paris Hilton

MIA Leaves Singing About Sex To Paris Hilton

Friday August 17, 2007 @ 05:00 PM

by:V.Bhaskar

(Photo By Rachel Verbin) " height="180" width="150">

MIA at Lollapalooza

(Photo By Rachel Verbin)

While speaking on the phone with MIA from London, England, where she's working on a mixtape for DJ Eli that she wants to call Threat To Homeland Security (her name was taken off the Homeland Security list four days before our interview), one quickly gets the impression that the outspoken queen of nu-world dance music isn't letting all the hype swirling around her and the upcoming Kala album go to her head.

"At this point no one can tell me what [kind of album] to make, I'm too opinionated," says MIA (a.k.a. Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) kindly, but bluntly. "I also came out of nowhere so they don't even know what they want to tell me to do.

"This is what caused my Three 6 Mafia problems," she goes on to explain about working with the group on two tracks for Kala, neither of which made the cut. "When I went to work with them they were like, 'Right, you're a girl, we need you to sing about sex.'

"And I was like, 'Listen, I have some time to sing with you and I'm not going to sing about sex right now. You're going to have to get Paris Hilton for this one.'"

MIA travelled the world and worked with such producers as Timbaland, Switch, Diplo and Danja while making Kala, and she found being a female to be one of her biggest challenges.

"In India it was hard because I'm a woman. People would say, 'Uh� you're a girl, you can't tell us what to do.' But you had to work with that. I got used to it and I didn't have time to fight that battle. I had Dave [Switch] joined to my hip and I would have to tell him what to do, and then he would have to tell them.

"Also, while recording in these different places, in the back of my head I kept thinking, 'Oh, I've only got this much time before I have to get back to London to refresh my visa.' At the end of the day, it came down to that a lot of the time."

MIA's been plagued with visa issues ever since her 2005 debut came out. And Kala — a less political, but brilliantly catchy, Bollywood-tinged effort — was heavily influenced by the situations she found herself in. Being stranded without demos, computers, her art and even clothes on occasion, the new album had MIA starting from scratch and having fun, but never losing sight of who she was.

"I could have left where I am and be a superstar MC living in Beverly Hills in a giant house with Gwen Stefani, but I didn't 'cause I couldn't," she says proudly. "People try to get me to collaborate or do things, but sometimes I say no because I'm just not ready.

"I know they're doing it for my own good. They say, 'Why don't you want this? You'll be huge. Don't you want to chart?'

"But I don't give a shit about the charts. I will not be an artist dictated by the charts. They tell me I'm too gangsta, but this is me. I have to stick to what I am."

MIA will play Toronto's Virgin Festival on Sept. 8 and Montreal's Osheaga Music And Arts Festival a day later.

—Phil Villeneuve