M.I.A.

“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...”

“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 r...”

“Versace designs have always been bootlegged. Now it's Versace bootlegging the bootleg for the bootleggers to bootleg the bootleg.”

“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...”

“Madonna did amazing songs. She had an amazing sense of style, without a stylist. And she was flawed, and sometimes she admitted it. I'll fight the fight for Madonna. I think she should send...”

“I remember taking my demo to every dance person in London. People were like, 'We don't know what this is!' The first people to champion me were a club in Manchester.”

“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 wh...”

“My giving birth was nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp.”

“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 ro...”

“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 ju...”

“I was shot at for being a Tamil in Sri Lanka, and then, everyone was calling me a Paki in London, and I'm not even Pakistani.”

“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...”

“Manhattan seems pretty developed, you know what I mean? Like, it has peaked in culture.”

“My father had no influence on my political beliefs, and to imply otherwise is wrong and irresponsible.”

“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...”

“It is a coincidence that Mathangi is the Goddess of Music and the spoken word, which can be rap.”

“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...”

“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. Ve...”

“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...”