M.I.A.

Benji B

Check, check one, two. How is everyone feeling today? Please make a lot of noise to welcome the one and only M.I.A.

[applause]

How are you feeling?

M.I.A.

Really hungover, but bear with me, I’ll have some Red Bull and hopefully feel better.

Benji B

Where have you come from?

M.I.A.

New York, I just did two shows at Terminal 5 in New York City and just flew in now. I have a show tonight, obviously, so I’m a little bit hungover.

Benji B

You’re massive in New York right now.

M.I.A.

I’ve just kicked off a tour, I’m touring ‘til December and it’s the start of a new set I’ve made. I use the Leema machine.

Benji B

What’s that?

M.I.A.

It’s a sync machine, so you do videos and samples and you can trigger stuff. It’s got a touch screen, so you can do effects and stuff like that, so it’s simplifying the show but complicating it a little bit. It’s a little bit more than a DJ and I have control over the visuals, which is cool. These are the first two shows with this new set-up.

Benji B

So we’re going to see it tonight?

M.I.A.

I think so, though my DJ really hates it. He says he’s going to smash it.

Benji B

And who’s your DJ?

M.I.A.

I still have Low Budget, who’s the other half of Hollertronix from Philadelphia and there’s still me and Jerry. I couldn’t get visas for anyone else, the people I wanted to recruit were in the jungles from the Congo and random people. Getting visas for me is hard enough, without getting them for people from India and Africa, which is ten times harder.

Benji B

I was just checking out some chart figures, I didn’t realise you’ve been in the top ten consistently in Canada.

M.I.A.

I didn’t know that.

Benji B

What’s the single you’ve got out at the moment?

M.I.A.

I’m not really sure here, I think in London it’s “Jimmy” and also in Japan. But in some places it’s “Boyz”, it’s just so random. I’m signed to an independent in London and a major in the US and the communication between those two doesn’t really exist. So they do their own thing and meanwhile I put stuff up on MySpace and do my own thing. There’s about eight people doing their own thing with my stuff, it’s not very regulated.

Benji B

And what’s the current album called?

M.I.A.

Kala.

Benji B:

Do you want to play us something from it?

M.I.A.

This is really strange. [laughs] I want what I talk about to make sense, so I’m going to do an introduction to my album. This is the second album and I didn’t really have any ideas about what it was about or what I was going to make it on. Before I get into the album, I’ll start from the top, with my first musical thought with what I was going to do with my second album. I heard this Tamil song a long time ago; I think it came out in 1995, and I thought it was really amazing so I wanted to track down its producer.

At the time I was still touring Arular, so I sent this track into Interscopeand said: “This is what I want do, I want to meet this guy, duh, duh, duh.” I think people were really inspired by it and it sounds similar to Gwen Stefani’s “Wind It Up” track so I was really pissed and had a huge fight. So this is the track.

(music: AR Rahman - unknown)

It’s really bad quality because I ripped it off a video.

[music continues]

Anyway, you get the idea. So that was the first song that I really liked and wanted to find the guy who produced it. So when Gwen Stefani put out “Wind It Up” the next week I was really pissed and decided not do something that had the vibe. But I went to meet the producer anyway and we worked on a few things. He’s like the Timbaland of Tamil Nadu, down South, his name is AR Rahman. His knowledge of music is so vast for where he is and what he does, and he’s got this studio, which is an £11m studio built designed by the people from Abbey Road in the middle of Chennai with 800million starving people. He owns the whole road.

I’d been meeting random people on the way there, people who were making music that really didn’t come from such an established place in India, just experimenting and figuring out what music even is, because everything is so limited and you can only put music out through movies and stuff. It was that week I went to meet that guy. In Indian music you have 79 different scales and in the West we only have two, so it opened up so many possibilities.

I started rounding people up, whoever screamed loudest in the street, if kids were playing, whoever was there and was the feistiest, I suppose, made me want to work with them. That’s how “Bird Flu” came about. It was the idea of... In the West we only use 4/4 beats and two scales and in the East, they use such complicated mathematics to make and interpret music, they have all these half-scales and stuff. I just wondered if India is becoming the world’s superpower in technology because they were getting all this work to manufacture computers and software, enough to manufacture say a Timbaland album, but for probably 1/100th of the cost.

I started thinking it’s a really special time to be in India because there’s an economic boom. They were all really excited that they were making computers and software, and if they made Logic knowing that there were 79 scales in music, it would definitely change how we make music over here, whether we know it or not. That’s why “Bird Flu” is a big mess, because it’s supposed to be complicated.

(music: M.I.A. – “Bird Flu” /applause)

Basically, in the end AR Rahman got me in contact with his musicians, so I had an unlimited number of people I could access, really amazing, like muso musicians. But I set up in a cupboard and didn’t work in his studio, I worked at his aunty’s studio. It was a little room, one monitor speaker put in there for us, thousands of cockroaches, it was really run down, no one used that building. But in India, if you go the posh studios, it’s a really spiritual thing, music’s an important spiritual gift from the gods and you have to take your shoes off and be respectful, almost like working in a temple.

And I was working with Dave Switch, who, I don’t know how to say this, but he consumes a lot of beer, like a bottle a minute, and he’d be loading up empty bottles. So to have the chaos which we have, and which we need – we need people to be able to walk in, walk out, smash a few things, set fire to some shit – and that kind of chaos was impossible to get in a nice clean place.

So I think “Bird Flu” probably is a bit dirty because of that. You turn your head and there’s a thousand cockroaches eating your leads. So it’s really makeshift, that whole song reminds me of that. When we made the video we tried to capture that whole thing.

Benji B

Was most of the record recorded in India then?

M.I.A.

No, I started it with “Bird Flu” but what I wanted to do was build the skeletons in India. I had the 505 there and I was getting musicians, real musicians, to play things back to me. Most of the time when you make music you start off with an organic sound, you play the instruments, then you put it into Logic and you make it sound more digital, or it just ends up that way by the time we finish. So I wanted to take something really synthy and digital and glitchy sounding on the 505 and then get real musicians to play it on their coconut violins, these weird instruments that are just really organic. In India, dance music generally and club culture, it was all going through that whole just E sound, which is where we are now.

Everything’s a 4/4 beat, just bringing back that ‘boom-cha, boom-cha’ sound that I’ve always related to an Ibiza-y thing. So when the new kids were picking up on it, I thought it was important to bring something organic back into it again. If you have 100 producers who are going to do that sound in the next year, someone has to fuck it up, bring new elements to the pot. It’s alright to go to India and dig up 30 funeral drummers from a little village and get them to make music for the dancefloor here, just to get things going. So I recorded all the basics there. At that time Dave wasn’t there, then he came and met me in Trinidad. I think the first four or five songs came out of that, apart from “Bird Flu”. We made “Boyz” there.

Benji B

You mentioned Dave Switch, who’s a very significant element to your sound.

M.I.A.

I’m just assuming you all know everything.

Benji B

For those of us who don’t know, do you want to fill us in on Switch Productions and how important that it is to your albums?

M.I.A.

Switch originally made a track for my first album, called “Pull Up The People,” which is this one.

(music: M.I.A. - “Pull Up The People”)

I’m going to keep all my songs really short, because it’s a bit weird. Switch comes from a house background and the first time I worked with him is when I went to record this song. For England at the time I was making this album, it felt like a weird moment because I definitely sensed a change, but there were no clubs playing that kind of mid-tempo music. It was all either grime, really urban clubs, or dance clubs that played trance-y, house-y dance music, like Fabric. Dave’s now a resident there once a month and they’ve become a supporter of this sort of sound and they have artists who are part of that scene in to play.

Benji B

And what do you call that sound?

M.I.A.

I don’t know. When I started writing, people said: “You don’t have to come up with the name because the journalists do that for you.” But no one really thought about it, I’d just get, “What the fuck is it?” OK, that’s really cool, but after three or four times I thought they’d think of something, but no one has.

Benji B

There’s certainly a wider association, in the press and musically, with DJs like Switch, Sinden, Diplo, Hollertronix, Low B, and artists like yourself, maybe even an artist like Spank Rock, that’s recognised as a scene. Do you feel boxed in by that or does it make it more powerful?

M.I.A.

I don’t feel boxed in. It’s important when you’re making music to feel inspired and it’s good to have some sort of thing going on. It’s interesting, though, in England it just didn’t happen at the time I was making it, so it was really, really difficult. Here in America... oh, not here.

Benji B

Canada.

M.I.A.

[smiles nonchalantly] I know, North America, it’s because I flew here today. In America it’s already happening and I caught that time. Now in London it’s so big, every club plays that Piracy Funds Terrorism style thing, that mishmash of Baltimore club and baile funk, dancehall.

Benji B

But those musics you’ve just mentioned are from far flung corners of the globe: baile funk from Brazil, Baltimore house, crunk from Atlanta, hyphy, all those things seem to go into the pot.

M.I.A.

To me, it was an obvious thing, you just play what you like, and if you have diverse taste, it makes sense. But it’s really difficult to meet producers who are open-minded. Dave was the first person I met who was really open-minded and could develop at the pace this thing was moving at. You can bring people to Dave and he really gets it and he’ll try to do the best with it. I find that really refreshing, which is why I wanted to work with him. You could dump him in the middle of nowhere and say: “Here’s a stick, make me a beat.” And he’d be able to do that. Or you can introduce him to someone who makes amazing music and he can find his way around it.

Benji B

Talking of which you’ve both been in the studio with Timbaland. Is that true?

M.I.A.

No.

Benji B

Oh, I bumped into him and he said you’d both been working with Timbaland.

M.I.A.

I did on Kala. He’s been working with Tricky in L.A. I think Wes said he’s working with Missy but I’m not sure. Anyway, that’s Dave Switch and he produced most of the album with me. What do you want me to play you next? I think this is Dave’s best work.

(music: M.I.A. – “20 Dollar” /applause)

I think with that one it’s really obvious what I was listening to at the time. It’s The Pixies song. It came back to me because it’s the only one I know how to play on the guitar, not that one, but the “Gigantic” song. That song is really amazing to me. It just happened, we put it together in a hotel room in India. I think I had two hours before I had to fly somewhere else, so we just did it really quickly.

We got someone from the hotel to come in and whistle on the track and she got fired, which really pissed us off. The manager fired her half an hour before, so we were trying to get her job back. Sometimes when songs come together within an hour it’s usually the best. Others I work on forever and they’re never done. But this was a quick, painless thing. I want to play you something random, mine and Dave’s favourite song, this is how we bonded because he’s so not the type of person I’d work with.

Benji B

Why not?

M.I.A.

I don’t know... Dave’s from this place called Essex, which is not great [laughs]. He’s like a real...

Benji B

Geezer.

M.I.A.

He’s a real geezer. When I was young I used to hang out in East London, which is on the way to Essex, and that’s where “XR2” comes from, hanging out with these Bengali gangs. We used to go raving all the time and this was my favourite song when I was 15. Dave was the only person who knew it and had this song.

I wanted to make something like this for my album, but I couldn’tgo there because you have to be insane to make it. I knew if I’d gone there, I’d never have come back. When you’re a musician, someone said: “There’s only three things that can happen to you: one, you become a drug addict; two, you go insane; three, you get hyper-spiritual.” This one made me think I’d go there with madness, so I stopped. This is seven minutes long and I’m going to play the whole thing because you have to live it. When I was really young, you’d hear this walking into a club at 14. I used to jump out of four-storey buildings just to make it to a club because my mum wouldn’t let me, but this gave me the strength to do it. It’s probably the longest verse ever rapped on a beat and it breaks records for me.

(music: Genaside II – “Narra Mine” / applause)

That’s by Genaside II and it’s called “Narra Mine.” It’s really, really rare and I hadn’t heard it since that time in my life.

Benji B

And what time was that in your life?

M.I.A.

The “XR2” days [laughs]. It was about 1992 and I was raving loads. With all the other rave songs, you can find them anywhere but this one’s really rare. After that, I didn’t want to say anything, it made me think differently about lyrics. Anytime I listen to that in the studio it shuts me down lyrically and I just want to put it on repeat, listen to someone’s else’s record. So that is one of the songs that I was listening to loads...

Benji B:

Where were you living at this point?

M.I.A.

Shit, maybe I should just play you some music from around that time in London. England is such a special place for pushing music to the limit, more experimental, not so precious as people who make all the French stuff. With “Bamboo Banga,” that’s the kind of thing I was thinking about. I just wanted to be like, “Fuck you,” about everything. I didn’t want to make sense, I didn’t want to write proper sentences, verses you’re supposed to write.

Especially me as an artist, at that time in the newspapers and stuff, people were writing: “M.I.A. is banned over her lyrics.” I felt like communication can’t be like that, I shouldn’t have to be rap like Eminem or Kanye West just to be a rapper, it’s so limiting. That guy on the “Narra Mine” song, you can hear how insane he is. If you go that far in, I don’t think you can last, you just get to a point where you snap. I didn’t want to... I don’t want to just say it all, burn out and snap. It’s a bigger fight than that if there is one. As an artist, you have to be 360 and spread it out in your work, in the art, the film, the stuff you do, not just in your verse.

“Bamboo Banga” was the first song I’ve been like that, I just wanted to say random words, things that I’ve seen in the past months in my life through everything I’ve seen and done, everywhere I’ve gone. It can be abstract like that, it feeds in through the music and the art and the film, the lifestyle. It’s difficult for people. When I brought it into the record company they were: “We need a hit. We wish she would just work with Timbaland.” I was coming in with “Bamboo Banga,” which doesn’t really say anything and is really abstract. It was inspired by this track somehow, I don’t know. I can’t really tell now...

Benji B

You’ve mentioned music and textile art, film, I know you’ve got a background in art and film. Is there a pecking order for you? Where does music come on your priority list or is it all just art, is it all the same?

M.I.A.

Obviously it’s the dominant factor in my life, it dictates what I do, travelling and touring. I try not to see music as a musician, it’s important for me stay human first. I try to see myself as an artist and the medium is the secondary thing. You have to develop as a person and get your vibe in check.

Musically, it really helps if you have a thing and if you do, you can do it in whatever thing you’re doing it in: if you make soft drinks, you can have it in that flavour. It is what I’m doing, but at the same time, I know there are going to be ups and downs and limitations on what I do. I sense it, definitely more on this album than the first one. The first album, I made a political record because I felt it was necessary for the time we were living in. Now I just want to do it to be annoying. It really feels like, since Arular I’ve had so much more trouble with immigration. Every time I enter a country I have to sign special sheets about freedom of speech and...

Benji B

What kind of lyrics have put you in that situation?

M.I.A.

I don’t even know if it’s the lyrics, my immmigration problems are more to do with my dad. I just don’t buy it, I don’t think you can get in trouble for saying PLO, which is just bullshit, I’ve heard Wu-Tang say it a thousand times. If it really is about being able to say things if you’re an American citizen, but you can’t say certain things if you’re a non-citizen, then that’s just a bullshit lesson to learn. I’ve tried to find out about these things and see if there were limitations on freedom of speech.

I’m not so directly political on this album, but I’ve had more problems and that’s why lyrically, what I was trying to do was keep it in a way that told me things. You put certain things out and they’re like codes. The way people react to these things, you get it back and it’s something else that you built.

When I was making this album, it wasn’t a case of, “This is what I do with my music, this is what I’ve learnt as an artist, this is what I’ve learnt about production.” It was, “There are a few things I need to find out about the planet and how shit works, and what’s important and not important to learn as a human being.” You build up codes and structures and it’s in the making. So depending on this, I wanted to figure out what I’m going to do next and I’m not sure if that’s music. Does that make sense?

Benji B

Yes. As you’ve blown up in North America as a cool UK artist, certainly one that’s seen in the fashion press as someone who”s fashionably, do you see that as undermining you getting your message across or diverting attention away from the fact you are saying something important politically on the records?

M.I.A.

No, because that’s just a part of it. For me, it’s just important. I would never be that artist who’d be straight up one-dimensional political. My whole thing wasn’t that I’m a politician, it’s that I’m a civilian but certain fucked-up things happen and I’m going to talk about it. Even on Arular, certain songs like “$10”, loads of songs, had nothing to do with it. But it’s also my history.

Benji B

Do you want to talk about that? You mentioned your dad before, but it might be best to put it in context for people who don’t understand what you‘re referring to.

M.I.A.

My dad was a revolutionary in the ‘70s. I grew up in Sri Lanka. When I got to England so much shit was happening. When the Iraq war was going on I thought it was stupid. I went to Sri Lanka that year and got to know exactly the ins and outs of what was going on. There was a systematic genocide, the Tamil people were banned from doing the census report, which technically means you can wipe out a whole race. They were shrinking in numbers and the population was just phasing out and when the people tried to tell me, whether it was Amnesty International or random people, they were really horrible stories. I filmed loads of stuff and I got into so much trouble.

That seeped into my music because it was occupying my headspace at the time. I came back, it was in my head and I was just “Wow,” the Tamil people are banned from talking to the press and I had all this footage, which I was trying to get into a film shape past the Sri Lankan embassy. They have to clear any work you make about the Sri Lankan political situation, they have to approve it, but they wouldn’t. So I became an artist because of that and made loads of stills and things like that.

I think any time you morph into a different form of creativity, most of the time it was because I needed to get around a certain situation. So it bled into the music. At the time when I was making music... I kind of am a life experience artist and it’s one of the important things I need to teach people, that if you get your inspiration from the shit that happens to you, no one can tell you shit and you never run out of it. It’s just a bag of fuel and you have it forever if you learn to get good at using yourself.

I think that”s how I was thinking about it and when I made music I just wanted to tell people: “This is happening, this is how I felt, I”m confused, I was here, duh duh, duh.” It was more just sharing something you’d gone through. But it grew into me being on the homeland security threat list and they red-coded me and wouldn’t let me in for ten months. Which is really stupid. But that was the point, just to show that there is a limitation to free speech. But if there is a floor and ceiling for freedom of speech, then we shouldn’t have gone and bombed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq for it. You know what I mean? That was one of the things we were supposed to be fighting for. Anyway, here I am.

Benji B

You mentioned before the Piracy Funds Terrorism sound. That refers to a mixtape you made, right?

M.I.A.

Yeah, I always used to say that when you go to a club it should sound like a mixtape. Just in terms of having Baltimore, or baile funk or kuduro be able to happen in one space. So you didn’t go to a funk club, or a kuduro club, you could have it all in one place.

Benji B

That was the thing that kicked it off for you before the first album? That’s before you signed to XL?

M.I.A.

No, I made that after I made Arular. I made “Galang” and put it out as a white label while I was working in a shop and it was getting played on the radio. DJs were calling me and BBC radio saying: “I like your record.” And I was like: “That’ll be £26.99, please.” So after that I became a musician because I couldn’t fight it.

Benji B

Let’s hear that, it was an underground hit in the UK but I think it went to number seven in the charts in Canada.

M.I.A.

You’ve been studying the charts? I don’t study the charts. [scans computer] Shit, I hope I have it.

(music: M.I.A. – “Galang”/ applause)

Benji B:

So that was the big one, that was when XL called you up.

M.I.A.

So I was living down the street from them, they were the closest company to my house. So I went to them because I could just walk it there and I was that poor. I played them that song and they signed me. At that time, I had four songs demoed. I finished the album, then I came to America and worked with Diplo and made Piracy Funds Terrorism.

I felt making Arular was so simple: “Galang” was the second song I ever wrote, the first was “M.I.A.”. It was the first time I sat on a four-track and wrote a song from start to finish and loads of the noises was from the 505. I didn’t want to be a singer and a performer – I thought I’d have issues with remembering the words. I scouted other people to perform that song, I demoed it with three other girls. In the end my demo actually became the track, but I was fighting it as long as possible to become a singer. On this album I had to get away from that sort of thing and think about it more like an artist.

With Kala, I had immigration problems and had to think about that, even though I just wanted to stay at home. I moved out of my place in 2005 and had to stay on the road. Making this album kept me on the road, so I kind of haven’t been home since 2005. I had to make it a creative process, just because I was so desperate to get into a house. Whether you’re working, like painting a picture, you want to be able to have shit everywhere, to go to sleep and wake up the next day and still be able to see it, to follow where you were.

It’s difficult to do that when you have no work, can’t access anything and your apartment is a no-go area. Things that inspire you or are around you, so the process became the most important thing. I think I had to make that as creative as possible.

Benji B

Coming from a visual arts background, what’s more important to you, the process or the final product?

M.I.A.

Definitely the process. I’m really grateful when people say they like the album, because to me it was the process. If people like the outcome, that’s really cool, but when I was making it, it was about being able to think certain things. Some of the songs I worked on in every single country I went to. I wanted to be able to add to it, layers and layers and layers, like a cake, then you slice it into songs. I recorded all the drums and a couple of other instruments in India. Then I went to Trinidad to record the atmosphere and got the vibe of it came from there. Subject matter was probably more like Liberia, then the bass sounds were England. Layers of shit.

It felt like I was making this thing and also making the artwork. I couldn’t really carry too much stuff with me, I was just going to these places and set up teams up on the spot just with people I met there. You had to make the connections and build from there, make things up right there on the spot. You’ve got “blah, blah, blah” days in this place: how good are you going to be at meeting people who are like-minded and get to what you need to get to?

I was just trying to keep my mind busy, but I was always thinking, “Any minute now I’m going to work with Timbaland and that’s the real album.” But I didn’t really have any access to the record companies, no one from Interscope and XL had any contact with me until I’d made ten tracks. I felt like I was in the wilderness with it all, using the world as my studio.

Benji B

And recording in so many different locations, what sort of software do you use to do that? What makes your life easiest when you’re laying down drums in India? You mentioned that you did that track with Dave in the hotel room...

M.I.A.

We just had this laptop. Wherever I go I hire speakers. In Trinidad, I rented a little spot and it was next to a football pitch where they’d have parties on Saturdays. So I went to one of the DJs and asked if I could rent the speakers off them once they were done. So I just had outdoor speakers, normal shitty speakers, and I set it up on the front porch and that’s where we made “Boyz.”

You can really hear the atmosphere, like on “Far Far,” which is the bonus track on the Japanese version – you can really hear the atmosphere on this. We were playing the beat of the through the speakers and it was difficult because we didn’t have any microphones or headphones, we were just making it on the fly.

So we were singing and you can hear it double-tracked and triple-tracked and the crickets were getting quadruple-tracked because every time you do a layer or vocal take everything was getting tracked twice as much in the music. So it started automatically having a weird sound. On this track, you can tell it the most. You can hear when the mic comes on.

(music: M.I.A. - “Far Far” /applause)

On that one you can really tell the sound is really affected by the environment.

Benji B

Logic?

M.I.A.

Yes, that was it, we just used Logic. At one point, when we recorded in the cupboard AR Rahman used to come down, or send his people to spy on us. He’s in his $11million studio and we’re in the cupboard. And he’s: “How do you do that with one guy and one computer?” And he’s got an 800-piece orchestra and stuff. But it’s just being brave and not giving a shit or limiting yourself to anything. That was the idea.

I wanted to play you this kuduro track because this inspired me a lot when I was making the album. I played this to Timbaland but he just didn’t want to know.

(music: unknown)

Benji B

Where’s that from?

M.I.A.

That’s from Angola and it’s street music, kuduro comes from the most underground sources. You’d think there wouldn’t be that much progression, but you see how far they push it. If people with that much to say can experiment with mute rappers, I felt really weird being in Timbaland’s studio worrying about whether I was in perfect tune and pitch. That made me go out in my own direction, I think it’s an inspiring track. Do you want to hear more kuduro stuff?

This track is by DJ Znobia, who’s my favourite DJ at the moment. I was going to go to Angola and work with him, but he got into a car crash and was in a coma for a month. Now he’s back out and making music again.

(music: DJ Znobia – unknown / applause)

I like that song. I have to play you this other song, it feels like “Narra Mine” to me, but it’s from India, probably about 1989/’90. I have it on a cheap rip from a VCD thing from a what do you call it... I just found it on a music video thing, but I loved it.

It’s really storytelling-y. I love that and don’t think there’s enough of it in dance music. Sorry, wait, I have the video for that, I’m going to play the video, it will make more sense because you have to see the dance routine.

(video: unknown / applause)

Benji B

How important is video to you as a way of expressing the ideas in your music and how much of a hand do you have in your own videos?

M.I.A.:

Certain ones, like “Bird Flu,” when I made that I was in India and I wanted to contain that as a whole project. So it had to come from there. Also, at that time I didn’t have a manager as well, I was really running out of control, on the phone going: “Hi, I need more money”. It was about working out how to start something from scratch and build it. The video ended up being an extension of the song, we made clothes and the kids got involved. You know, it was really fun. That was 100% my thing.

But with “Jimmy,” that was a video I wanted to hand over to someone else. It was kind of a pisstake of the record company, because they always wanted something really shiny. I said: “Fine, I’ll just hand it over to someone.” The company wanted a hit, so I made something that sounded super-pop, but I didn’t want a hand in it, just so I could see how they would dress me and shoot me. By the end I thought I’d wind up with a video I could put speech bubbles on and exactly explain what was going on, but I’d got into other things by then. I’m going to make a “Paper Planes” video. I’m going to keep it to what it’s about and how I came to it.

Benji B

What is that song about?

M.I.A.

It’s about lots of stuff. But one of things is that when I moved to Brooklyn I moved to Bed-Stuy and it’s got this new African community living on top of the hip hop community, who are long established. That part of Brooklyn’s really famous because you’ve got Biggie and Jay-Z and Lil” Kim from there. But the new African immigrants, you’ve got a lot of Senegalese and Somalis, they don’t really care about the hip-hop element, they’ve built their own community on top of that. It’s a really concentrated, intense neighbourhood. It kinda comes from that.

The most intimidating thing that can be said to an immigrant when they come over, just the biggest cliché, is: ”Are they going to come and take our money and take our jobs?“ That’s how it happens in England, it’s always the most said thing. But you see these people and they’re really vibrant and totally add to the culture, but they’ve got their own little third world community in the middle of New York. It’s really weird in this developed, metropolitan city. And it comes from trying to mash those two things up.

Benji B

So what are you doing for that video?

M.I.A.

I’m working at a hoagie shop, or a hoagie stand.

Benji B

And if you could pick any director from any visual media, who would you choose and why?

M.I.A.

I don’t know, I think right now is a really weird time in music. I don’t even know if it’s important to make a video, not in the same structure as MTV set out. I don’t think MTV even show videos any more. Spike Jonze was supposed to make the “Paper Planes” video and we’ve been talking about it for months and we started shooting bits of it. He always felt like I don’t come across enough in my work and videos and he wanted to shoot something that was more real. To me, I haven’t quite worked it out. [phone rings] Sorry, I can’t find it, my bag’s a mess.

Benji B

One thing I want to ask you is about the internet. Around the “Galang” period, how important was the internet and MySpace to getting your message across?

M.I.A.

Honestly speaking, in the beginning... As a person, it wasn’t really important to me, I never spent time on the internet. Honestly speaking, in England, I think 60% of the working class don’t have a computer still. So if you’re talking about street stuff, those kids are not on the internet. I always felt if I went into the internet, it might change the way I think if I open it up, but when I made “Galang,” that’s how it spread. So I felt I should embrace it, that’s exactly what I needed to do. When you go to Liberia that’s the most important thing you can show someone. I have problems working with Blaqstarr, it’s chaos working with Blaqstarr, he doesn’t have emails, you can’t actually contact him.

Benji B

Where’s Blaqstarr?

M.I.A.

He’s from Baltimore, he made “The Turn” with me. He’s a real amazing producer, he”s just so amazing. But he has real life issues. Every time I go down to Baltimore he’s in jail, I have to bail him out, wait days for him. It’s the only time I called the lawyers at Interscope. They’re like: “What?” It”s like, “I need to get someone out of jail, can you call someone?”

I always think it would really help him if he was on the internet and able to control his MySpace and use AIM and send files and stuff. That’s how Diplo works, he’s really internet-based as a person, that’s the thing. If you go into certain places and areas of music, like kids doing kuduro in Angola, getting them to move at the pace of the rest of the world is really difficult. In the West, dance culture is so internet-based and so fast and it works on remix culture, DJs and all those things, but you either open up the travel thing and work that way or this is the only other bridge you have in order to be able to share things.

Benji B

So how did you meet the people who inspire you? You mentioned Diplo, someone from Baltimore, people from Angola, if these people are not on instant messenger or whatever, how do you contact them?

M.I.A.

I go there.

Benji B

But how do you contact them and say, “Let”s work together,” in the first place?

M.I.A.

Diplo, I went to the club. Blaqstarr, I went to his house in Baltimore. That’s how I meet people, you hear stuff, track them down and go there or wait until they’re near you. But Blaqstarr’s never going to be in London. Going to Angola is really difficult because of the situation, you have that kind of shit to do deal with. In Liberia, they don’t have electricity, let alone a computer. I don’t know, it just happens.

Benji B

M.I.A., is it “Missing In Action” or “Missing In Acton”?

M.I.A.

It’s ‘Missing In Acton,’ but it doesn’t really wash anywhere else outside of London.

Benji B

Any questions from the floor?

Audience Member

You produce these tunes by yourself, or just with others?

M.I.A.

I think I did more solo stuff on Arular. I usually tend to have ideas on the 505, take it out of MySpace and get people to add their ideas. Galang was like that, I made it on a 505 and then Steve Mackey and RossOrton helped me add the bassline and the Moog, all the analogue sounds because I don’t have loads of equipment. It’s quite random, but with Switch, he originally came on the project as a technician, I wanted him to do all the technical programming stuff. But it’s not that clear cut. When you are in the moment and you’re making something it’s important you create and not think about shit like that, you let it evolve and go where it needs to go and sort it out afterwards.

Audience Member

Your production is really raw and I really like that about it. How much of that is down to the feeling, the vibe at the time? How much effort do you put into fine-tuning your sound, EQing the mixes and stuff, and what percentage of you energy goes into that as opposed to the energy that goes into the vibes of your tunes?

M.I.A.

On this one, I fine-tuned quite a lot. On Arular, there’s nothing. Even with “Bucky [Done Gun]”, Wes [Diplo] sent me the loops with the verses and I went into a studio I’d never been in before and used a technician I’d never met before, I think I wrote the lyrics in a cab on the way to the studio. Wes came down and spent two hours in the studio in transit to Paris, it was all really scrappy.

But at that time of making Arular, it was just, “I”m just making a sketchbook,” it was just a sketchbook of things I was thinking about while I learned about music. I didn’t know shit about music, I was a fan, but I’d never wanted to make it. But it was like having a new toy, you want to test out the limitations, so it was all really scrappy. There was nothing solid in the way we produced it.

But on this one we fine-tuned it quite a lot because I was travelling loads and bringing up the files in loads of different places. Me and Switch would get together after a while of him going off to do his own thing and look at them again. So we got to work songs quite a lot, and look at them again and again. So, yeah...

Participant

Thank you.

Audience Member

Firstly, the 505 is the actual groove box, the MC-505, right? What exactly is your relationship with Brazilian music and baile funk?

M.I.A.

My relationship... I think I”m just, at that time I was just a huge fan. I’d never gone to Brazil, but after I made “Bucky” the sound exploded in London and now you can get loads of funk clubs. I believed in it and wanted people in London to hear it and it was just about spreading the noise. When I made it, they said “Bucky” was the first time baile funk had been played on MTV and the Brazilians were saying: “How come it takes an outsider to get our music played on MTV? That’s bullshit.”

So now, I think they play more funk videos and they”ve started supporting it, so that’s cool. It was bizarre when I went there. I went to the Sugarloaf mountain and got chased by like a 100 screaming 14-year-old girls on my first day. It just hit me, what that meant. Before then, I was in London trying to convince people about this music. I love Brazil and their whole vibe, I just think the funk infrastructure has to shift and mould into some other shape.

Because when I went there I found that DJ Marlboro had a lot of power and loads of music and musicians have to go through him. So the way it spread was weird, it wasn’t positive enough, it just felt like there was no money and the kids in the favelas who were really poor and could’ve made money out of that, weren’t getting fed off it enough. They’d have to work their arse off touring.

And Deize Tigrona, who made the “Injeção” song “Bucky”’s inspired by, she does five shows a night. She was eight months pregnant and was still performing the day before the baby came. Then the day after she gave birth she was playing again breastfeeding on stage. I think the infrastructure has to change a little bit for the music to actually help properly. I hope I did something constructive for funk.

Audience Member

Yeah, you did, for sure.

Audience Member

What pushed you to start making international collaborations, all this travelling? Did your label support you or did they try to set you up with one person? It seems like you’re travelling a lot to do this music.

M.I.A.

I travelled loads because I didn’t get a visa to come home. I didn’t want to stay in London because I didn’t have a place of my own, I didn’t want to stay on people’s couches. And it’s really shit and boring sometimes, it rains all the time. I’ve already done Arular based in London, I didn’t want to make the same album twice.

The difference was, with Kala I had money. If you’re going to spend $100,000 on a beat from Polow Da Don, you might as well give that $100,000 to a whole bunch of people around the planet and try something else. I found out, even if those songs turn out shit, it’s alright to spread and spend money differently. You have to build new templates for spending money in the music industry. But no one really tells me what to do in the industry, because they’ve never had a Sri Lankan rapper. I just say: “You don’t know and I don’t know so we’re both equal.” There’s no point in them telling me what to do, because they don’t have a template.

I think that’s how it works in the music industry. You’re screwed if there’s someone like you who’s been there before you, then your fight is harder. But if there isn’t, then you can say what you want and get away with it. It’s good to have a bank, but in terms of what I make, it’s in the air.

Benji B

I’ve just been told we’ve got to let you go for the soundcheck, so I’m afraid that’s it. For now, say thank you very much for M.I.A.

[applause]