Quote

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.

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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
Look
Bunch
Discriminate
Looks
Definitely
Refugees
Never
Beginning
Blah
Like
Career
Refugee
People
Careers
Representing
Responsibility
Represented
Situation
Muslim
Felt
Correct

More quotes by M.I.A.

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When I first came out, I was a film student and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did. But I did it in the most creative way possible.
M.I.A.
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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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With homogenized culture, even if you feel frustrated, you'd have to write a Taylor Swift song to get heard.
M.I.A.
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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.
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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.
M.I.A.
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I wanted to represent a different decade, and I wanted someone who goes back further than me. I go back the furthest on this thing, I never really noticed that before. I'm going to have to fix that or I'm going to look really old.
M.I.A.
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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.
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Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
M.I.A.
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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.
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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.
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That divide between the rich and poor is so crazy, because even white kids are suffering now.
M.I.A.
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If music's a political place, I'm out.
M.I.A.
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Whoever's inside is inside whoever's out is out.
M.I.A.
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We know that those huge U.S. brands do have political sway.
M.I.A.
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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.
M.I.A.
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Creativity needs time to harness before it goes out, and because that's difficult, memes have become the creative language.
M.I.A.
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My statements aren't incomplete, they're just in-progress. It's a debate and a discussion.
M.I.A.
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Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?
M.I.A.
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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.
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Across the world, on your phone, everybody gets the same list of things to read, listen to, and watch.
M.I.A.