“Anyone who has trolled through bins on Canal Street for videos of kung-fu movies or reggae mixtapes will recognize M.I.A.’s first single, ‘Galang,’ as an example of actual, on-the-ground world culture: synthetic, cheap, colorful, staticky with power.” Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in 2004, when the musician M.I.A., then twenty-seven, was anticipating her début release, “Arular.” This week, we caught up with M.I.A. on the occasion of her latest album, “Matangi.” On this record, she inhabits and plays off of the character of the Hindu goddess Matangi. She told us that her trips to the slums of Chennai, a city in southeast India, influenced many of the aesthetic choices in her videos and album art work; other influences are more difficult to identify. The album, as Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in last week’s magazine, “is an entirely coherent pop album that makes no concessions to anything currently popular in North America.” In this video, M.I.A. discusses Matangi, her artistic inspirations, and why she wants to reinvent the hippie.
Video: M.I.A. Talks “Matangi”
