M.I.A.

By user • Nov 1st, 2007 • Category: Band Bios

M.I.A. is not a Sri Lankan-by-way-of-London rapper. She’s not a figurehead for women in hip-hop. She’s not a sex symbol. Okay, she might be all of these things, but none of them matter. She’s a musician. And qualifying her music with whichever the side-story-du-jour might be belittles her truly fabulous output. It’s unfair to take the focus off her energetic live performances that find her bouncing around and entrancing the crowd like a pied piper pinball. It’s patronizing to categorize 2005’s Arular or this year’s even-stellar Kala by gender and geography. Because paying attention to anything other than the songs unintentionally marginalizes her music as being the best of only certain subcategories, when in reality her captivating gigs and progressive collections of yelps, squawks and rhymes are universally compelling — and not because she’s a Sri-Lankan-by-way-of-London sex symbol.

Chicago Innerview Magazine, November 2007

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