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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Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?
M.I.A.
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What's wrong with hip-hop [is that] it became so one-dimensional it became like a businessman thing. It's run out of creativity. It went so far off about making money that now everyone can do it.
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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Everything I think seems to be controversial, so I feel like I need to just go away for a second and put it all down on paper until the storm passes.
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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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's what I miss, being a real human.
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.
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I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyones perception of me.
M.I.A.
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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.
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Whoever's inside is inside whoever's out is out.
M.I.A.
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Everyone has that moment where they just rebel.
M.I.A.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I dont support terrorism and never have. As a Sri Lankan that fled war and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee.
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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There's a bit of hope that a song can be about anything. If you want to write a song about anything, you can, and you don't have to put it through the process of having it be trendy or cool or generic pop or these types.
M.I.A.
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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.
M.I.A.