Quotes by M.i.a. - Page 3

I felt pissed off because I realized that you have to teach people in a clichéd way how to be happy-and happiness has become too one thing in American media. Achieving happiness is not really about having a flat stomach and the best car.
M.i.a. / Artist
Car
Media
People
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I think people were genuinely addicted to hip hop in the 90s, addicted to the idea of empowerment. I think it came from [the fact that] the rappers in the 90s, their parents coming from the 70s, had such a rich variety of records to sample.
M.i.a. / Artist
Ideas
Rapper
Thinking
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Me, it was always about being able to bounce around to where I wanna be. Like, with 'Arular,' people always say it's so political, but I think 50 per cent of the album is not very political at all. It's just really a shouty, shouty girl thing.
M.i.a. / Artist
Girl
Able
Bounce
Political Me People
Always Political Me
Album
Wanna
Cent
Per
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I think when something becomes a comfortable genre, it's against what street art stood for in the beginning - breaking out of genres and taking art out of galleries. Now street art is in the gallery, and it's all made up into a nice, packaged concept.
M.i.a. / Artist
Art
Nice
Thinking
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Predominantly in the West, if you can only have creative voices that are either black or white, I'm going to say whatever the f - k I want, because no one's going before you, and if no one's coming after you, I'm just going to be the freakiest of all freaks!
M.i.a. / Artist
Creative
Voice
White
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At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.
M.i.a. / Artist
Attitude
Home
Anything And Everything
British
Clubs
Felt
Actual
Making
Sounds
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Matangi's mantra is aim, which is MIA backwards. She fights for freedom of speech and stands for truth, and lives in the ghetto because her dad was the first person in Hindu mythology who came from the 'hood, but had gained enlightenment through not being a Brahmin.
M.i.a. / Artist
Dad
Freedom
Truth
Aim
Backwards
Enlightenment
Freedom Of Speech
Ghetto
Hood
Mythology
Speech
Person
Had
Being
Fights
Hindu
Came
Through
First
Gained
Her
Mantra
She
Stands
Which
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Culturally, I found myself in a very weird situation: you were the person that had made that journey to the West, and then you were going back to comment on something, and then suddenly you were questioned and told, "You can't touch that now because you're a pop star."
M.i.a. / Artist
Journey
Made
Stars
West
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My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever - the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn't have a bed, and he slept on a table.
M.i.a. / Artist
Alone
Dad
Science
Bed
Candlelight
Clever
Engineering
Grew
Mud
Russia
Scholarship
Snow
Person
Studied
He
Cleverest
Landed
Got
Hut
Slept
Super
Table
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When I first came out, I was a film student and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did. But I did it in the most creative way possible.
M.i.a. / Artist
Mom
Hair
Lunch
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I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of doing that. My music took off above the rest of those things: You can just make a song, put it on a CD, and get it out to all these people.
M.i.a. / Artist
Cds
People
Song
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Basically, when I went to school in Sri Lanka from age five onward, the classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long.
M.i.a. / Artist
Age
Five
Hierarchy
Long
Poor
Sat
School
Sri Lanka
Tone
Your Long Day
All Day
Skin
Played
Back
Basically
Classes
Street
Front
Lanka
Onward
Row
Sorted
Sri
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Nowadays, [young musicians] are so quick to be like, "OK, fine, I'll take the cheque, or I'll get the stamp from XYZ, and I'm expanding my brand," rather than thinking, "I'm part of this space over here, and in order for it to grow, you can't have it assimilated by this bigger bubble or corporate brand."
M.i.a. / Artist
Space
Order
Thinking
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It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake.
M.i.a. / Artist
Creative
Fake
Interesting
Survival
Album
Named
Talents
Real Name
Second
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I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"
M.i.a. / Artist
Creativity
Thinking
Writing
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The mentality has taken over because of the way we've promoted things. It's been accepted, to live with fear, and to fear that it's going to be terrible, prepare for the worst. The meat and potato of our existence right now is influenced by what happened after 9/11 - we put our thinking into protecting borders.
M.i.a. / Artist
Accepted
Taken
Thinking
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In the beginning [of my career] I definitely felt a responsibility because I was representing a bunch of people [Sri lankans] who never got represented before. I felt this responsibility to correct that situation, to be like, "Look, you can't discriminate against refugees and Muslim people and blah, blah, blah . . ."
M.i.a. / Artist
Careers
People
Responsibility
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I don't understand why people make me want to make music that's a join-the-dots thing by numbers. I find it really difficult when people say, 'Aw, you should have made a really big hip hop record, that would have been really good for you' or, 'You should have made a song like Lily Allen, that would have been so great.'
M.i.a. / Artist
Numbers
Song
Good Great Music
Allen
Aw
Good Music Great
Hip
Hop
Record
Lily
People Say
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My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England.
M.i.a. / Artist
Uncles
Car
Brown
England
Fashion
Homeless
Millionaire
Topshop
Car Me Street
Boot
Companies
Could
Sell
Eventually
Street
His Way
Lane
Put
Market
Stall
Uncle
Worked
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The first 10 years of my life, I lived as 'Matangi.' When I came to England in '86, my first week of school was terrible because I would put my hand up to answer things, and no one would choose me because they couldn't say my name. My auntie came from Europe to visit us, and she was like, 'Just call yourself something else.'
M.i.a. / Artist
England
School
Terrible
Life Yourself Me
Call
Came
Choose
Hand
Life Me Yourself
Something Else
Visit
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It's a bit weird, because I don't really know what people expect or think being political is; I just don't get it. What am I supposed to do as a pop star-stroke-revolutionary? Get up and put my balaclava on, go to the grocery store and then invent some Google viruses, and then go to rob a bank to fund my revolution on YouTube?
M.i.a. / Artist
Fund
Google
Political
Revolution
Viruses
Youtube
Weird
Bank
Expect
Rob
Grocery
Grocery Store
Invent
Pop
Store
Supposed
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You have, in America, you have gang signs. Well, 5,000 years ago, there was thing called a mudra, which is your sitting position when you do yoga or you're meditating or you're praying or whatever. And there's not a lot of them that are named after gods and goddesses, but the middle-finger is specifically named the Matangi mudra.
M.i.a. / Artist
Yoga
Gang
Meditating
Position
Praying
Sitting
Years Ago
Named
Goddesses
Signs
Specifically
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Sri Lanka is an island off the coast of India. There's two ethnicities there; one the Sinhalese, which is the majority and the government, and the minority, who are the Tamils. That's where I'm from. And my lifetime sort of began there; I spent 10 years, and I was there during when the war started and fled as a refugee to England.
M.i.a. / Artist
Coast
England
India
Lifetime
Majority
Refugee
Sri Lanka
Began
Island
Lanka
Minority
Spent
Sri
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I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times, and I just go, 'Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that.'
M.i.a. / Artist
War
Grateful
Middle
Remember
Sri Lanka
Wow
Years
Life Remember My Life
Feel
Now
Had
Again
Shot
Those
Ever
Getting
Times
Human
Gonna
Human Being
Lanka
My Life
See
Sri
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The theme of counterfeits, of those that produce and sell them, has always been part of the culture of M.I.A. When I was contacted by Versace, it seemed a great idea to invert the circle. Versace's designs have always been copied; now it's Versace that copies the copies, so those that copy must copy the copies. So this will continue.
M.i.a. / Artist
Great Idea
Produce
Theme
Versace
Circle
Copied
Designs
Sell
Seemed
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When we moved to England in 1986, I was ten years old and I didn't know anything about punk or hip hop. The only words I knew in English were 'dance' and 'Michael Jackson.' We got put in a flat in Mitchum, and the council gave us second hand furniture, second hand clothes and a second hand radio that I took to bed with me every night.
M.i.a. / Artist
Dance
Bed
Clothes
Council
England
Every Night
Furniture
Moved
Night
Punk
Radio
Ten
Years
Words
Anything
Me
Only
Every
Old
Michael
Flat
Gave
Got
Hand
Hip
Hop
Jackson
Put
Second
Ten Years
Took
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Somebody told me that if you wake up every day and do stuff that's easy, then you're doing the wrong thing. If you wake up every day and do stuff that's really hard and you manage to get through to people, then you're doing the right thing. They might have just fooled me by telling me that, but it worked. I think that's my philosophy.
M.i.a. / Artist
People
Philosophy
Thinking
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When mayors get together they probably have better conversations and have better notes to share about running different cities, and just do what suits. Basically, like when you combine all the religions and take the best bits, you should be able to combine all the cities and take the best bits, the information, the tried and tested things.
M.i.a. / Artist
Running
Different
Together
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In my head I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, Damn, that's a pop song! I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people. Right up until then, though, I think, "Of course everybody feels this way. This song's the same as the Greek national anthem."
M.i.a. / Artist
Long
Song
Thinking
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Now, [hip-hop/grime artists] Stormzy, Skepta, or the Section Boyz have to be validated by Drake, Rihanna or Beyoncé. They're rolled into this one urban culture bubble; it's not really to do with, "I'm specifically f - ked off about my country and what's going on in my town." We're very much only showing success to artists who impress American artists, and I'm one of them.
M.i.a. / Artist
Artist
Country
Hip Hop
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People say we're similar with Lady Gaga, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic.
M.i.a. / Artist
Grace
People
Thinking
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I get called "ISIS" now. Why don't we have a name-and-shame weapons dealership website? Instead, we're like, "Oh my God, are you really talking about the refugees again, making yourself into a caricature?" And it's like, "Until you stop the person in your country who's making billions of dollars from selling weapons, yeah, I have to talk about refugees." Whatever I say will get twisted or messed with.
M.i.a. / Artist
Country
Isis
Talking
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M.i.a. Quotes - Page 3

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