M.I.A.

The British singer Mathangi Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., was born in London in 1975. Her family moved to Sri-Lanka when she was six months, because of the difficult political situation there. M.I.A.’s father was a political activist; thereby he did not have an opportunity to see his family very often. Later the whole family moved to India, and after that M.I.A., her mother, brother and sister came back to London in 1986. The singer graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where she studied the art in all the possible variants. That kind of education helped her to realize what she would like to do in the future.

Thus in 2005 M.I.A. released her debut album titled Arular that took its title after her father’s name. The diversity of styles is just incredible: Arular presents hip-hop, electroclash, funk, reggae and even punk-rock. The musical experts acclaimed that record and noted the successful mixing of styles and interesting political-oriented lyrics, which was integrated into the music in a delicate manner. M.I.A. wanted to create such kind of music that would make people want to dance, however the singer also wanted to share some serious information. As the result, she succeeded to combine these things, and Arular proves that perfectly.

M.I.A.’s second studio work titled Kala was released in 2007. Her first album was named after her father, and the second record was named after the singer’s mother. Kala pleased the music lovers with the variety of styles, including dance music and alternative hip-hop. This time M.I.A. even used some ethnic instruments, like Indian drums, which can be heard in compositions Boyz and Bird Flu. The album Kala turned out to be very strong and several musical periodicals titled it the best album of the year.

M.I.A. started her musical career in a very confident way and she is definitely not going to stop. In 2010 she released her new album titled MAYA, which traditionally got strong sound and several experiments as well. For the very first time the singer added the elements of industrial into her music, which combine well with other various styles of MAYA. It is impossible to ignore that record, because M.I.A. creates really original music, without limiting herself by any borders of styles.