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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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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
Making
Culture
Platform
Black
Platforms
Film
Belong
Years
Musical
Like
Built
Community
White

More quotes by M.I.A.

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Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?
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That's what I miss, being a real human.
M.I.A.
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In England right now you're not good enough until you get validated.
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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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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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.
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Art is supposed to be about creativity. But the same people are the same art darlings every month, and it's a bit annoying. It's supposed to be diverse and interesting and conceptual and have weird concepts in a comfortable place.
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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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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It's the only thing to do when you're in London - hang out in a taxi.
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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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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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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I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyones perception of me.
M.I.A.
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You can't turn up at college in stilettos and say you're gonna be a filmmaker. In the college, they were teaching me avant-garde filmmaking, where I had to make films that were, like, an hour long about nothing. I just refused to do it.
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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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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If you narrow the playing field, the next generation has less to put out, to eat and regenerate from.
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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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.