M.I.A. Quotes
-
I feel like I can't really have a comment.
→ -
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.
→ -
The mentality has taken over because of the way we've promoted things. It's been accepted, to live with fear, and to fear that it's going to be terrible, prepare for the worst. The meat and potato of our existence right now is influenced by what happened after 9/11 - we put our thinking into protecting borders.
→ -
I wanted to represent a different decade, and I wanted someone who goes back further than me. I go back the furthest on this thing, I never really noticed that before. I'm going to have to fix that or I'm going to look really old.
→ -
Just make music; don't talk about politics.
→ -
That's what New York is like - you can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.
→ -
With homogenized culture, even if you feel frustrated, you'd have to write a Taylor Swift song to get heard.
→ -
I've documented a lot of things myself as a filmmaker. If you want a rockumentary, that's in there.
→ -
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?"
→ -
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.
→ -
I'm still working out my opinions - it's always a question mark. I leave loads of space open, and people don't like that.
→ -
Predominantly in the West, if you can only have creative voices that are either black or white, I'm going to say whatever the f - k I want, because no one's going before you, and if no one's coming after you, I'm just going to be the freakiest of all freaks!
→ -
I feel like I'm living in the dead weeds of hip-hop. I live in the graveyard of what went wrong with hip-hop.
→ -
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.
→ -
I get called "ISIS" now. Why don't we have a name-and-shame weapons dealership website? Instead, we're like, "Oh my God, are you really talking about the refugees again, making yourself into a caricature?" And it's like, "Until you stop the person in your country who's making billions of dollars from selling weapons, yeah, I have to talk about refugees." Whatever I say will get twisted or messed with.
→ -
Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day.
→ -
I come from a generation where you put the art out and had the luxury to sit back and watch the world deconstruct it, and that was valued. Unfortunately now the work lives in a weird context.
→ -
People say we're similar with Lady Gaga, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic.
→ -
There has been an effect of business rap on the output of today's rap music. But I don't think that's the modern day rapper's fault.
→ -
Businessmen in society are not going to be the ones that promote anything outside of money.
→ -
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.
→ -
If music's a political place, I'm out.
→ -
Creativity needs time to harness before it goes out, and because that's difficult, memes have become the creative language.
→ -
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 . . ."
→ -
If you're talking about coexisting and tolerance then you have to live by example, and you can't have shiny people all the time everywhere, which is what breeds that sort of thinking - this is better than this, that is better than that.
→ -
I am the bridge between the East and the West. I don't want to abandon one for the other.
→ -
You need everyone to get together and just believe in it, and lead by example that it is possible to be outside the system, and that's really super-f - king hard, and I'm sure there's some geniuses out there who can achieve it.
→ -
Nowadays, [young musicians] are so quick to be like, "OK, fine, I'll take the cheque, or I'll get the stamp from XYZ, and I'm expanding my brand," rather than thinking, "I'm part of this space over here, and in order for it to grow, you can't have it assimilated by this bigger bubble or corporate brand."
→ -
Instead of going to war, we should put the money into arts and culture and let creative people define what Britain is.
→ -
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.
→
Related Authors
-
The Weeknd Recording Artist -
Mia Farrow Actress -
Lady Gaga Recording Artist -
Mia Wasikowska Actress -
Katy Perry Recording Artist -
Christina Aguilera Singer -
Missy Elliot Rapper -
Lana Del Rey Singer-songwriter -
Sia Furler Singer-songwriter -
Beyonce Knowles Recording Artist -
Kanye West Songwriter -
Skrillex Electronic musician -
Nicki Minaj Rapper -
Drake Rapper -
Jay-Z Rapper -
Ciara Singer-songwriter -
Azealia Banks Rapper -
Madonna Ciccone Singer-songwriter -
Diplo DJ -
Janelle Monae Musician