By Jonathan Durbin
Photographs by Cass Bird
Styling by Jason Farrer
Sometimes M.I.A. just doesn't feel like it anymore. A fall tour through Australia found the underground agitator wondering whether making music was still right for her. Everyone's entitled to an off day, but some of us less so than others. When you're one of the few political voices in alternative culture, an artist who's staked her reputation on doing things the hard way, those days are few and far between. "I feel like whatever motivates me to make music next either has to be something that's incredibly good or incredibly bad," she says quietly in a voice verging on the cynical. "At the moment I feel like I'm free-falling. It's a bit scary. The main cultural musical icons right now are Britney Spears, who is a tragedy, and Kanye West, because he's that crass about selling himself. Everybody talks about Britney being so pathetic for her performance at the VMAs. That shows no understanding of a human being and what they go through. If that's how you get judged, and that's what it takes to [make it] in America, then I don't want that. I don't want to compromise what I say to get on the radio."
Her mood was colored in part by what had happened at the border: Australian officials had asked her to sign a document that stipulated she wouldn't insult the government. According to M.I.A., it explained that Australia supports freedom of speech, but that there are limits to the country's hospitality -- in other words, so far and no further. This wasn't an isolated incident. Instead it's become typical of her customs experiences over the past three years. She intended, for instance, to record her latest album, Kala, in the U.S., but was denied an entry visa; she wound up traveling the world, taping songs in Liberia, India and Japan. ("Boyz," the second single on the album, began as a rejoinder to border guards across the globe.) When asked what, exactly, Australia was afraid she would say, M.I.A. explained, "I'm a bit beyond being an artist who says, 'Give peace a chance.' Part of me is like, 'Give war a chance,' just to stir it up, you know what I mean?" At her show in Brisbane, she lit the entry document on fire. The crowd loved it.
M.I.A. wears a vest and top by Harmon, necklace by Mended Veil and ring and bracelets by Fallon for United Bamboo.
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