Her latest venture into the headlines involves an interview with the United Kingdom’s Evening Standard where she spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement and how American pop stars treat the sensitive subject. The artist, who is of Sri Lankan descent, asked whether stars like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar will take a stand for Middle Eastern people who are being persecuted in America and around the world.
‘It’s interesting that in America the problem you’re allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter. It’s not a new thing to me — it’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s,” she said. “Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? That’s a more interesting question. And you cannot ask it on a song that’s on Apple, you cannot ask it on an American TV program, you cannot create that tag on Twitter, Michelle Obama is not going to hump you back.’
M.I.A hopped on Twitter this morning (April 21) to clarify her statement. “A) #BlackLivesMatter B) #MuslimLivesMatter. I’m not muslim. My crticism wasn’t about Beyonce. It’s how you can say A not B right now in 2016,” she wrote. “My question was, on American platforms what do they allow you to stand up for in 2016? This has been the number one question for me.”
Later on in the interview, the “Paper Planes” artist was asked what advice she would give herself if she were starting her career again and reflected on something Kanye West told her ten years ago.
“He said: ‘Whatever you do, don’t date people, don’t get pregnant, don’t fall in love. Love is like cancer.’ At the time, I thought he was so wrong. I said: ‘It’s terrible you think like that!’ But now I think he was right.’
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