I might be a bit mouthy about America but I'm no terrorist

IT has its ups and downs but there’s no doubting that M.I.A. and the United States enjoy a special relationship.
The up side. The singer has just scored the biggest British hit single in the States since the Spice Girls. She’s started her own label in partnership with US giant Interscope. She’s expecting her first baby with her American boyfriend.
The down side. She’s been called a “terrorist” because her father is a Tamil separatist in Sri Lanka. She had a prolonged battle to get a visa. She harbours a deep loathing of the Bush administration.
Born Mathangi Arulpragasam in Hounslow 31 years ago, known to her friends as Maya, she creates vivid sound collages that take in countless styles including pop, rap, rock, bhangra, punk and reggae.
Her two albums, the Mercury-nominated 2005 debut Arular (named after her father) and last year’s Kala (named after her mother), have marked her out as one of the most groundbreaking and vibrant artists in years.
The controversial Clash-sampling single Paper Planes, first released on Kala but finding success through the Pineapple Express movie trailer, has found its way into the hearts of more than two million Americans.
It’s an addictive three minutes of gunshots, ringing cash registers, lyrics about immigrants being misunderstood and typically chanty vocals.
For M.I.A, popularity and notoriety seem to go hand in hand. “I think they notice me because I’m mouthy,” she says. “I’m not mouthy like Amy Winehouse, just mouthy about American issues.
“Because of my whole political thing, everybody started calling me names and saying (she puts on an American accent), ‘Oh my God, she’s a terrorist.’
“You know, I grew up with my single-parent mum. I didn’t know my dad. Most of my life has been in England and I went through the British education system. I don’t have to be a terrorist to be vocal in song.
“I’m a very average person. I’ve got the same stories as a lot of people in London, and Britain is really multi-cultural. In the Eighties, we gave America Boy George, a reggae-singing tranny. Now we’ve given them a rapping terrorist and it’s freaked them out!”
Although she has never had the slightest thing to do with the Tamil Tigers, she’s bemused at the way things get out of control.
“How come people are allowed to say M.I.A. equals a tiger print shirt equals suicide bombing? If anyone else wears a tiger print shirt, it means nothing. Converse has put out a tiger print shoe and I wore it in my video and that means terrorism.
“That kind of word association reduces human beings to the lowest common denominator. It’s nuts. This guy has an internet campaign against me. Every time you join his MySpace friends, you can put out flyers.”
When I catch up with Maya, she’s in a Los Angeles hairdressers’ dying hair for a 17-year-old girl singer called Rye Rye, the first signing to her label NEET.
It doesn’t take long for our conversation to get round to next week’s presidential election. “If McCain gets voted in, then I’m outta here quicker than anyone can say Obama,” Maya exclaims.
“I’m here because it’s an interesting time. It’s important to be here watching and saying to people, ‘Look, your country has been so dumb for eight years. If you f*** up one more time, that’s a whole generation of dumb people’.”
Coinciding with the election and the global financial crisis, Paper Planes is a challenging statement.
“Everyone always thinks that all immigrants want to do is come and take your money,” she says, echoing the song’s chorus. “But perhaps all they want to do is sing and dance.
“At the time Paper Planes is doing well, we’ve gone so beyond the idea of everybody getting on anyway. America’s going through the worst stock market crash. They’re in trillions of dollars of debt. And the Earth is going to eat itself from running out of energy.”
If that sounds a bit gloomy, Maya actually comes over as a hugely upbeat person with an infectious enthusiasm for life.
And between developing the career of Rye Rye and working on the follow-up to Kala, there’s the small matter of her baby with Ben Brewer of New York band The Exit due early next year. “That’s part of the creation process,” she says. “I don’t know how it’s gonna fit in but I came to hang out here and people kept talking about babies. In the end, it was like if you can’t beat them, join them.
“Also I was running out of ideas of what to name the next album. I’ve done one with my mum and dad, now I can name one after the baby. Or maybe I’ll name the baby after the album.”
With Paper Planes doing well in the UK charts, I ask Maya what her next musical ambition is.
“I’d like to work with someone in a band, Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets) maybe because he’s amazing lyrically, or Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) because he’s in the noisiest band in the world.” (News-Thesun)