M.I.A.’s successes – Mercury and Shortlist Awards for her 2005 breakthrough Arular; an eye-opening around-the-world journey to write, record and produce her second album, Kala; her extensive visual art accomplishments; and her efforts to bring the plight of the Sudanese, Liberians and her own Sri Lankan people to the mainstream – are myriad. And so are her struggles: her well-documented early childhood was spent fleeing between war-torn Sri Lanka and India before landing in government housing in her native England, while her father, a Tamil activist, hid from the Sri Lankan army during that country’s civil war. And more recently, she lashed out against Internet rumors perpetuating the falsehood that it was DJ-producer-sometimes-boyfriend Diplo, and not M.I.A., who actually masterminded Arular.
But despite the fact that M.I.A.’s a human collage: a hypnotic, hyper-aware, hyper-colored, multi-cultural, multi-talented mash-up of international sounds – from hip-hop to dancehall to baile funk to ragga and back – and ideas – from war and poverty, sex and disease and sexism, to racism and identity, hegemonic masculinity and the Bush administration – and forget the fact that she’s got more music cred than 100 artists strong, what we ultimately admire about M.I.A. isn’t her ability to look amazing in fluorescent colors, bright lipstick and stretchy pants. (Yet it's that too.) It’s that she’s living proof that one person – one young woman – using just a 505, some Bollywood samples and razor-sharp wit and lyrics – can actually raise consciousness and expose global suffering and indignity.
Without much more than her family, her inner spirit and her bootstraps, M.I.A. pulled herself up out of strife, turned up the volume on global voices previously unheard by the mainstream masses and issued a call to action to “get crackin’” and “pull up the people.” And that’s why we’re celebrating the unparalleled fearless female all week as MTV’s Artist Of The Week.
Watch "Boyz," M.I.A.’s latest video, below. Plus, watch her narrate her life story on "A.D.D. Bio,", see M.I.A.'s exclusive mtvU interviews, and check out photos of M.I.A. and her crew (including her brother), shooting her MTV Artist Of The Week TV spots in L.A. -- you can see all of M.I.A's MTV video spots right here. And, of course, catch her all week on MTV.
(Credit: Lyndsay Siegel)
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