TAG: Arular

Jul15

Diplo Says M.I.A. “Didn’t Care” About New Album

Diplo hasn’t been shy about not feeling M.I.A.’s new album (neither have a lot of reviewers). But the producer (and ex-BF) responsible for much of the music found on M.I.A.’s first two albums has made some especially harsh statements to Blackbookmag.com.

On what went wrong with MAYA: She didn’t care about it. I was in the studio with her, she didn’t write anything.

On the long running partnership with Diplo and Switch: Me and Switch tried our best to be quality control of the record and she didn’t want that. She kind of went on her own way. I was like, Look, nobody in your crew—we were the only people she could trust, and our asses were on the line too. We got here because …

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Jul15

The Implosion Of M.I.A.: Is It Indie Music’s Altamont?

During the conclusion of last week’s episode of Entourage, movie star Vincent Chase goes skydiving in a desperate search for the rush he’s long since lost as a major celebrity. As the character plummets towards the ground, the weightless voice of M.I.A. sings out “Gravity is my enemy” and the final track of her latest album, MAYA, folds into the closing credits. It’s the best context yet for the album and artist that has struggled to resonate with the a global audience in 2010. First there was the politically unsophisticated if visually shocking video for the song “Born Free” which was banned from Youtube for it’s graphic depiction of redheaded youths being blown up. The clip garnered heavy-buzz, but little conversation about the dissonant song it accompanied. That was followed in quick succession by a scathing cover story in New York Times Magazine, a willfully eligible album title (officially it’s /\/\ /\ Y /\), a scathing review of the CD on the ultra-influential website Pitchfork.com and most recently, the cancellation of the 25,000 person HARD LA festival—which banked on M.I.A. to both headline and curate the line-up—due to poor ticket sales.   …MORE

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Jul13

The Ups & Downs of M.I.A. (2003-2010)

It’s been a rough couple of months for M.I.A. with the difficult launch of her third album, Maya. Some call it classic media backlash, while others will insist that the album’s challenging sound fails to live up to her previous efforts. But M.I.A. has always had her ups and downs. Here’s some of the most significant ones in her career.

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Jul13

M.I.A – /\/\ /\ Y /\ (Review)

M.I.A.

// / Y /

Released by Interscope


Maya is M.I.A’s third full length release, following critically acclaimed Arular and Kala. Lately she’s been in the limelight for her immature twitter beef with journalist Lynn Hirschberg who wrote the now-infamous New York Times Magazine profile on her, along with conflicts with ex-BF/producer Diplo, a clusterf!@# of a record release party in NYC, and just yesterday the cancellation of LA's HARD festival that she curated and was was meant to headline. You could call Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam a sheep in wolves' clothing: there’s a contrast between ...

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May11

M.I.A. To “Self Title” New Album, Pushes Back Release

The sun came up this morning, which means there must be new M.I.A. news. The animated GIF of a singer has announced the name of her upcoming third album, /\/\/\Y/\. Yeppers, that’s /\/\/\Y/\. Some say that if you stare long enough, you’ll see it spells out MAYA, which in that case makes sense seeing as how M.I.A.’s first two albums were named after her mum and dad. But we keep looking and all we see is a sailboat.

No word if this album title was a result of the open called for suggestions put forth via Twitter last week (we suspect that bit of info is scheduled for tomorrow’s blog role.) But we do know that the new album has been pushed back two week from it’s original release date (you know, the one announced via blimp at Coachella). And we …

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