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Interview: M.I.A. (Pt. 2)

What's your favorite dance number from a Bollywood or Tamil movie?

Oh, I'm saving it. I found this amazing one last time I went. I think the video was filmed in 1989 or something like that. The track is called "Shiver Shiver." It has the best music video I have ever seen. There's this guy in stonewashed jeans and a Reebok top doing a dance routine. I'm going to post it up on my blog one day. I don't really know what movie it is but I have the video of it. It's actually one of the songs that I recorded for the album in India, but it didn't make it on the album. I got some drummers to play me that beat but the song was just too big for me. So I gave the track to Bangladesh, and he cut it up and made it real straight forward. Eventually we demo-ed it as "Hit That" but I wasn't really into the sound of it. But there's a bit of a tiny part of the beat I recorded on there.

What was the most surprising connection you found between all places the traveled?

If you go to Jamaica or India, or you go to Africa or Brazil, there's always a bunch of musicians who are really experimental and they always find you. And if you do music too you have this passport into everybody being really great and cooperative. When I went to India, I met all these musicians and nobody ever said no. They were always really up for experimenting, morphing sounds and trying new things. It's this community where there's so much tolerance and understanding. There's definitely some new scene going on.

Recording technology has gotten so much more widespread these days that a kid anywhere can join that community with a burnt out PC and a bootlegged copy of fruity loops.

Yeah, like Blaqstarr. He's exactly that. I took the songs we made together to Abbey Road in London to master them. And it was the most ridiculous thing. We made those songs in Baltimore on fruity loops and little computer monitors that come free with the computer. That's how we made "The Turn." It's a ballad but it still got made on computer speakers. Really shitty ones, not even Sony. At Abbey Road they were like, "What the fuck is this shit? Are you fucking serious?" And I was like, "Yeah, I think it deserves it." They were asking me how it was made and I felt really embarrassed. But then I was like, "Shit, I don't know if I'm actually compromising that sound by even bringing it to Abbey Road. Maybe I should be really sticking up for that shit by putting it straight on my record without mastering it."

You've spoken about being frustrated by your experience recording with Three 6 Mafia and Timbaland. Were you disappointed by U.S. hip-hop?

I love Three 6 Mafia and Timbaland. And I love hip-hop. I grew up on that shit. I don't wanna say anything bad about it. But by the time I got to it I felt like it was too late. I wanted realism but that was difficult. I also felt like it had been tainted because I'm a woman. They're so used to rent-a-beat girls coming to the studio without any opinions that when they see me, it's frustrating. I guess some of them want to put me through this shine machine and expect I'll start singing hip-hop and R&B. They were like, "Well obviously you want to sing about sex." And I was like "Obviously not. Because I woulda obviously done it by now, innit?" Three 6 Mafia told me, "Girl, you just too gangsta." And I was like, "Well, it's not that I'm too gangsta. I'm just not scared."

So what was it like recording Timbaland?

When I went into the studio with Timbaland I was playing him songs from Angola and going, "Look how progressive music is there!"

You played kuduro for Timbaland?

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