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What really drives me mad about art is that, in America, the only thing you can do is to take it apart.
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
Drives
Mad
Apart
Art
America
Take
Thing
Really
More quotes by 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.
I don't have a community like a black community to belong to [with] a musical platform that's been built for years and years and years, or the film-making culture, and I don't have the white one to belong to.
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By the time it came to the 90s, the late 90s, being a businessman was the beacon to uphold. We've been having the concept of the best rapper equals the best businessman.
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It could be the sort of declining grip of the American MTV-nation culture-the fact that MTV doesn't play so much music anymore.
M.I.A.
Instead of going to war, we should put the money into arts and culture and let creative people define what Britain is.
M.I.A.
The music industry was invented, like, 100 years ago. I'm talking about the goddess Matangi, who invented music 5,000 years ago. She was the only thing that inspired me.
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In England right now you're not good enough until you get validated.
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 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.
If you narrow the playing field, the next generation has less to put out, to eat and regenerate from.
M.I.A.
You have to constantly redefine who you are.
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.
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.
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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.
I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her.
M.I.A.
Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day.
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.
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.
Creativity needs time to harness before it goes out, and because that's difficult, memes have become the creative language.
M.I.A.
