M.I.A.'s messy Rolling Stone interview

[TwistedElegance™]

What happened with Oprah? There was a picture of you two together, but then you kinda slammed her.

In 2009, Time nominated me for one of the most influential people of the 21st century or something and I met Oprah at that party. And I was like, "Hey, people are gonna fucking die in my country. Like, please pay attention." And she was like, "You're shit because you were rude to Lady Gaga and I'm not talking to you. And I'm gonna interview Tom Cruise jumping on my sofa, so fuck off."

Did she really react like that? That's crazy.

Yeah, she didn't talk to me. She shut me down. She took that photo of me, but she was just like, "I can't talk to you because you're crazy and you're a terrorist." And I'm like, "I'm not. I'm a Tamil and there are people dying in my country and you have to like look at it because you're fucking Oprah and every American told me you're going to save the world."

On producer Diplo:

That moment, (debut album) Arular and you, specifically, seemed to represent a melting pot here in New York. Rich, poor, black, white, brown, whatever. It was a scene. Why do you think it worked so well?

It was still really appreciative of American culture, and it was positive in the interpretation of it. So look, you may have this, this, and this, through your history, and here's how we interpreted it and here's how we processed it. And you're welcome to go to the Favela, and the Favela is welcome to go to New York. We liked making clothes. Like, I had tracksuits made out of African prints, but then I was in wherever. . . Maybe that's how it worked, and it's unsustainable because eventually the pendulum swings the other way. And the more you open up the world, the forces that close it, it'll come up stronger. This is why talking about Diplo is kind of important in relationship to this album, because he's associated to a concept which is global and then what he became is completely the opposite in 10 years. It's been hard to stick to your ground on a concept which is actually: "The world's better when it's global. The world is better when everybody can fucking like get each other and understand each other and have dialogue. If you don't like something, you need a fucking page and a platform to say you don't like it."

So your success started to become a problem?

When I got signed by Interscope, he literally smashed my hotel room and broke all the furniture because he was so angry I got picked up by a major label and it was the corniest thing in the world that could possibly happen. And then Missy Elliott called me for the first time in 2005 to work with me on her record, and I'm sure we had a massive fight about that — the fact that I was talking to anyone who was, like, popular. I wish I enjoyed it because I had this person on my shoulder the whole time saying, "It's shit, it's shit, it's shit. You shouldn't be on the charts. You shouldn't be in the magazines and you should not be going to interviews. You should not be doing collaborations with famous people. You should be an underground artist. So the whole two years I was with him, I just let him dictate. I basically had this man dictate to me how everything in America that I experienced was completely, like, irrelevant and it was nothing. So it was kind of a weird time for me. It was only afterwards, when I went into the second record and I went into it without him, I got to enjoy that by myself. But on the end of that I ran into another man, so the window of me actually being alone, single and a female and being empowered and enjoying what I created was very, very small."

Was Diplo's mentality like, "You're selling out"?

Oh, 100 percent. It's only now when I look back at it in 2015, I can see that he was just jealous and he couldn't wait to be Taylor Swift's best friend and date Katy Perry. But at that time I believed him. I just felt like he was right, and he was something of a political, righteous person with some values. I didn't realize it was just jealousy. That actually, the life that I had and the story that I told through my music and the connections I had with people in the music industry and the connections that I made in the streets of London or around the planet and me being the way I am and my personality — that is what made me make that record. It was really stupid for me to put all that hard work in and evolve as a human being for 25 years and then on the 27th year meet this guy and just give him the batch of controlling it. I think that's what happens to women, you know: You fall in love, and shit happens."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/arular-10-years-later-m-i-a-reflects-on-globe-shaking-debut-20150320?page=3

She went IN.

[Utopia]

find hard to believe the Oprah stuff but im 100% with her on Diplo

[aed05]

I believe both stories. You don't go in on OPRAH unless you have FACTS! Lady O's ego is legendary and Diplo is a known Douche, so yeah I can see it.