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Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?
M.I.A.
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M.I.A.
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 18
Activist
Actor
Composer
Fashion Designer
Model
Music Video Director
Musician
Painter
Photographer
Rapper
Record Producer
Singer-Songwriter
Ventura County
California
Mathangi Arulpragasam
Maya Arulpragasam
Exciting
Fiction
Permission
Besides
More quotes by M.I.A.
Across the world, on your phone, everybody gets the same list of things to read, listen to, and watch.
M.I.A.
I'm not sticking up for white kids - I'm going to have a barrage of hate mail - but it's true. If you're poor, you're really poor.
M.I.A.
In the beginning [of my career] I definitely felt a responsibility because I was representing a bunch of people [Sri lankans] who never got represented before. I felt this responsibility to correct that situation, to be like, Look, you can't discriminate against refugees and Muslim people and blah, blah, blah . . .
M.I.A.
It's the only thing to do when you're in London - hang out in a taxi.
M.I.A.
I think people were genuinely addicted to hip hop in the 90s, addicted to the idea of empowerment. I think it came from [the fact that] the rappers in the 90s, their parents coming from the 70s, had such a rich variety of records to sample.
M.I.A.
That divide between the rich and poor is so crazy, because even white kids are suffering now.
M.I.A.
I feel so terrible for the kids now. In London, even people in their forties can't afford to buy a house or have kids.
M.I.A.
If you're talking about coexisting and tolerance then you have to live by example, and you can't have shiny people all the time everywhere, which is what breeds that sort of thinking - this is better than this, that is better than that.
M.I.A.
I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyones perception of me.
M.I.A.
Whoever's inside is inside whoever's out is out.
M.I.A.
Somebody told me that if you wake up every day and do stuff that's easy, then you're doing the wrong thing. If you wake up every day and do stuff that's really hard and you manage to get through to people, then you're doing the right thing. They might have just fooled me by telling me that, but it worked. I think that's my philosophy.
M.I.A.
That's what I miss, being a real human.
M.I.A.
If music's a political place, I'm out.
M.I.A.
Everyone has that moment where they just rebel.
M.I.A.
When I came to England in '86, my first week of school was terrible because I would put my hand up to answer things, and no one would choose me because they couldn't say my name.
M.I.A.
I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos. They funnel me through, Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?
M.I.A.
If it's just politics that's running music, f - k that. I'm out of here! I can't think of anything more boring.
M.I.A.
I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of doing that. My music took off above the rest of those things: You can just make a song, put it on a CD, and get it out to all these people.
M.I.A.
Nike is the uniform for kids all over the world, and African design has been killed by Nike. Africans no longer want to wear their own designs.
M.I.A.
I felt pissed off because I realized that you have to teach people in a clichéd way how to be happy-and happiness has become too one thing in American media. Achieving happiness is not really about having a flat stomach and the best car.
M.I.A.
