Nothing missing in her world
U.K. artist M.I.A. blends musical styles with ease, grace and a razor-sharp tongue
John Kendle

How Maya Arulpragasam takes to playing arenas is anyone’s guess. Even hers.

Arulpragasam is M.I.A., a 28-year-old Londoner of Sri Lankan descent who was a visual artist on the rise when she was hired by Justine Frischmann, leader of Elastica, to do the photos and a cover for the group’s 2000 album, The Menace.

Brought along on Elastica’s subsequent U.S. tour to film a documentary, Maya hung out with Peaches, the provocative Canadian MC who was opening the show. Peaches turned Arulpragasam on to the rudiments of making sounds with a beatbox. A four-month trip to St. Vincent followed, and it was a journey that left Maya with the sense that she had to make music.

Upon her return to London, she sequestered herself with lyrics, melodies and a crappy old keyboard and created a musical version of the pastiche of images that is her visual work.

Arulpragasam eventually emerged last year with Galang, an exotic yet tough-as-nails track that blends sing-song, swinging vocals; hip hop ethos; garage sounds; reggae slang and even hints of South Asian bhangra.

She quickly signed to XL in the U.K. and was then courted by just about every U.S. record label, finally settling on Interscope. When her debut full-length, Arular, hit music stores this spring, she quickly became a critics’ darling — a sonically exciting artist whose backstory was out of this world.

Her musician-by-accident tale is compelling, but Maya’s father, for whom Arular is named, has been a leader in the Tamil struggle for independence in Sri Lanka since the 1970s. (Maya hasn’t seen him since she was very young.)
After spending much of her summer playing club gigs and theatre shows in key North American cities, the talkative London MC is about to embark on a nine-show jaunt with it-girl Gwen Stefani, right in the heart of middle America. Denver is the closest she’s been to Winnipeg, which is where she joins Stefani’s Harajuku tour.

“It’s (going to be) interesting to find out what it’s like,” M.I.A. says over her cell phone from New York City. “I wanna know, just in terms of touring, what it’s like throughout the whole spectrum, from 20 people in a bar to 20,000 in an arena.

“As an artist I just wanna see it, but I haven’t really thought anything beyond that. It’s an education, and I want to have a conversation with Gwen Stefani about what she’s up to.”

Because of her background in the U.K.’s indie scene, M.I.A. intends to try to keep her show as real as possible. She’ll be accompanied onstage by vocalist Cherry and a DJ (though it won’t be Diplo, the Philly platter spinner who’s been a frequent collaborator as well as her boyfriend; he has a gig in Brazil on Nov. 17) and has already been working on new visual backdrops for her set. They’re based on her own artwork but won’t be anything too elaborate.

“I’m a cop-out. I keep believing that what people wanna see is realness, you know?” she says. “I come from an indie background, so to me it doesn’t have to be so theatrical and performance art.”

As her non-working life is currently divided between London, Philadelphia and New York, Maya says her first goal once she finishes touring this fall is finding a home. Then she intends to head to Jamaica for six months to make a new album with Missy Elliott producer Timbaland.

First, though, she wants to find her vibe rather than just start making complicated new beats with the technology she can now afford.

“I bought a (Roland) 909 and I was going to step it all up a bit, but I want to find more of an interesting progression than just upgrading your machine,” she says. “So that’s kinda what I’ve been doing, making sure the vibe is there or my enthusiasm or motivation is there. Technology is the last thing to worry about. You can put music together, I think, however you want.”