M.I.A.

With the 1^st of this month British recording artist M.I.A. Finally released her fourth studio album

“Matangi”. While she might is not known to a wide audience I'm sure most people have heard her song paper planes that was on Slum-dog millionaire and nominated for an Oscar.

The reason I like her is that her music is not ordinary but very exotic and most of all critical.

Just like in her last albums she addresses social and political injustices.

Mathangi so her real name was born in London to Sri-Lankan parents who moved her back there when she was six months old. Spending the first years of her life in a war torn country and later living as a refugee had a big impact on her today's music. MIA is of Tamil ethnicity, the biggest minority in Sri-Lanka that had been fighting the Sinhalese majority for years in the civil war.

Since she is the only Tamil person in western media she tries to draw attention to the ongoing genocide in Sri-Lanka how she calls it and also addresses other serious topics like the situation of Syrian refugees, women's rights in Arabia and the prey upon the poor by the upper class.

One example for her sense of picking up the right topics is a song she released in 2010 with the lyrics “Handbone connects to the internet connected to the Google connected to the government”
Back then some people might have laughed or said she was being overly dramatic but regarding this whole NSA scandal that is all up in the media lately she wasn't so wrong at all.

While critics may say some of her sociocritical lyrics like “for her Bentley is she riding your dirty dick” are pure hypocrisy since she enjoys several material privileges from her engagement to billionaire heir Benjamin Bronfman, her origins and her father a Tamil freedom fighters leader do give her credibility.

Her music is one of a kind, while she mostly raps, she uses Indian elements which paired with her critical lyrics make her songs really worth giving a try. I have a few clips added here in the End. The first to is an interview where she talks about the problems Tamil people are facing. The other is a music video to her song "Born free" a song about racism which's video had been banned banned because it had visualized the images and consequences of racism too much for some people.

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                                                 MIA talking about the war in Sri-Lanka