1975–1999: Early life M.I.A. was born Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam on 18 July 1975, in
Hounslow, London. She is the daughter of
Arul Pragasam, a
Sri Lankan Tamil engineer, writer and activist, and his wife, Kala, a seamstress. M.I.A.'s first name is derived from the Hindu goddess,
Matangi. When M.I.A. was six months old, her family moved to
Jaffna in
northern Sri Lanka, where her brother was born. There, her father adopted the name Arular and became a political activist and founding member of the
Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), a political Tamil group affiliated with the
LTTE. The first 11 years of M.I.A.'s life were marked by displacement caused by the
Sri Lankan Civil War. She attended Catholic convent schools such as the
Holy Family Convent, Jaffna, where she developed her art skills—painting in particular—to work her way up her class. Due to safety concerns, M.I.A.'s mother moved with her children to
Madras in India, where they lived in a derelict house and received sporadic visits from their father, who was introduced to the children as their "uncle" in order to protect them. The family, minus Arular, then resettled in Jaffna temporarily, only to see the war escalate further in
northeast Sri Lanka. During this time, the primary school of nine-year-old M.I.A. was destroyed in a government raid. in an atmosphere she has described as "incredibly racist." While living in England and raising her children, M.I.A.'s mother became a Christian in 1990 and worked as a seamstress for the
Royal Family for much of her career. She chose not to change the album title. M.I.A. attended the
Ricards Lodge High School in
Wimbledon. Following high school, she attended
Central Saint Martins by gaining admittance through unconventional means despite not having formally applied. In 2000, she graduated from London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design with a degree in fine art, film and video.
2000–2002: Visual art and film While attending
Central St Martins College, M.I.A. wanted to make films and art depicting
realism that would be accessible to everyone, something that she felt was missing from her classmates' ethos and the course criteria. At college, she found the fashion courses "disposable" and more current than the film texts that she studied. She told
Arthur magazine "[Students there were] exploring apathy, dressing up in some pigeon outfit, or running around conceptualising ... It missed the whole point of art representing society. Social reality didn't really exist there; it just stopped at theory." As a student, she was approached by director
John Singleton to work on a film in Los Angeles after he had read a script she had written, though she decided not to take up the offer. For her degree, M.I.A. prepared her departmental honours thesis on the film
CB4. M.I.A. befriended students in the college's fashion, advertising and graphics departments. In 2001, M.I.A.'s first
public exhibition of paintings after graduating took place at the Euphoria Shop on London's
Portobello Road. It featured graffiti art and spray-paint canvasses mixing Tamil political street art with images of London life and
consumerist culture. The show was nominated for an
Alternative Turner Prize and a monograph book of the collection was published in 2002, titled
M.I.A.. Actor
Jude Law was among early buyers of her art.
2003–2005: Musical beginnings and Arular on her
Arular Tour M.I.A. cites the radio broadcasts she heard emanating from her neighbours' flats in the late 1980s as some of her first exposures to her earliest musical influences. In college she developed an affinity for
punk and the emerging sounds of
Britpop and
electroclash. While holidaying together in
Bequia in the Caribbean, M.I.A. began experimenting with Frischmann's MC-505. She adopted her stage name, "M.I.A.", standing for "Missing In
Acton" during this time. Of her time in Bequia, she said "I started going out to this chicken shed with a sound system. You buy rum through a hatch and dance in the street. They convinced me to come to church where people sing so amazingly. But I couldn't clap along to hallelujah. I was out of rhythm. Someone said, 'What happened to Jesus? I saw you dancing last night and you were totally fine.' They stopped the service and taught me to clap in time. It was embarrassing". In 2003, the independent label Showbiz Records pressed 500 vinyl singles of "
Galang", a mix of
dancehall,
electro,
jungle, and
world music, with
Seattle Weekly praising its
a cappella coda as a "lift-up-and-over moment" evoking "clear skies beyond the
council flats."
File sharing,
college radio airplay, and the rise in popularity of "Galang" and "Sunshowers" in
dance clubs and fashion shows made M.I.A. an underground sensation. M.I.A. has been heralded as one of the first artists to build a large fanbase exclusively via these channels and as someone who could be studied to re-examine the internet's impact on how listeners are exposed to new music. She began uploading her music onto her MySpace account in June 2004. Major record labels caught on to the popularity of the second song she has written, "Galang", and M.I.A. was eventually signed to
XL Recordings in mid-2004. Her debut album, to be titled
Arular, was finalised by borrowing studio time. "Galang" was re-released in 2004. In September 2004, M.I.A. was first featured on the cover of the publication The FADER, in its 24th issue. The music video for "Galang" made in November of that year showed multiple M.I.A.s against a backdrop of militaristic animated graffiti, and depicted scenes of urban Britain and war that influenced her art direction for it. Both singles appeared on international publications' "Best of the Year" lists and subsequently "Best of the Decade" lists. The songs "Pull Up the People", "Bucky Done Gun" and "" were released as
12-inch singles and CDs by XL Recordings, which along with the non-label mashup
mixtape of
Arular tracks,
Piracy Funds Terrorism, were distributed in 2004 to positive critical acclaim. The album title is the
nom de guerre that M.I.A.'s father took when he joined the
Tamil independence movement, and many of the songs acknowledge her and her father's experiences in
Jaffna. While making
Arular in her bedroom in west London, she built tracks off her
demos, using beats she programmed on the
Roland MC-505. The album experiments with bold, jarring and ambient sounds, and its lyrics address the
Iraq War and daily life in London as well as M.I.A.'s past. "
Galang", "
Sunshowers", "Hombre" and the
funk carioca-inspired co-composition "
Bucky Done Gun" were released as singles from
Arular. The release of the latter marked the first time that a funk carioca-inspired song was played on mainstream radio and music television in Brazil, its country of origin. M.I.A. worked with one of her musical influences
Missy Elliott, contributing to the track "Bad Man" on her 2005 album
The Cookbook. She also toured with
Roots Manuva and
LCD Soundsystem, and ended 2005 briefly
touring with
Gwen Stefani and performing at the
Big Day Out festival. On 19 July 2005, M.I.A. was shortlisted for the
Mercury Music Prize for
Arular. According to the music review aggregation
Metacritic, it garnered an
average score of 88 out of 100, described as "universal acclaim". They reported in 2010 that
Arular was the seventh best reviewed album of 2005 and the ninth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on Metacritic of the 2000–09 decade.
Arular became the second most featured album in music critics' Year-End Top 10 lists for 2005 and was named best of the year by publications such as
Blender, Stylus and
Musikbyrån. The songs, artwork and fashion of
Kala have been characterised as simultaneously celebratory and infused with raw, "darker, outsider" themes, such as immigration politics, personal relationships and war. In February 2007, the first track from the album to be made available to the public was "
Bird Flu", which was posted with an accompanying music video to her MySpace. Later that year, M.I.A. featured in the song "Come Around", a bonus track on
Timbaland's 2007 album
Shock Value and a track on
Kala. The single "
Paper Planes", described a "satire on immigrant stereotypes", and the EP
Paper Planes – Homeland Security Remixes EP were released digitally in February 2008, the single eventually selling
three times platinum in the US and Canada, certified Gold in New Zealand, and becoming the 29th most downloaded song in the digital era in the US and earning a
Grammy nomination for
Record of the Year. "Paper Planes" is to date
XL Recordings' second best selling single, and by November 2011 it had sold 3.6 million copies in the US, currently the seventh best-selling song by a British artist in the digital era. In 2007, M.I.A. also released the
How Many Votes Fix Mix EP which included a remix of "Boyz" featuring
Jay-Z. Like its predecessor, universal acclaim met ''Kala's
release in August 2007 and the album earned a normalised rating of 87 out of 100 on Metacritic. Kala
was a greater commercial success than Arular
. To support Kala'', M.I.A. performed at a series of music festivals on the
Kala Tour featuring performances in Europe, America and Asia. She performed three dates opening for
Björk in the US and France. In 2008, M.I.A. provided guest vocals on
Buraka Som Sistema's
kuduro song "
Sound of Kuduro", recorded in
Angola with an accompanying video. The same year, M.I.A. and director
Spike Jonze filmed a documentary in
Woolwich, South London, in which they both appeared with
Afrikan Boy, a
Nigerian immigrant rapper and she disclosed plans to launch her own record label, Zig-Zag. She ended the year with concerts in the United Kingdom. By year end,
Kala was named the best album of 2007 by publications including
Rolling Stone and
Blender. Metacritic reported in 2010 that Kala was the tenth Best-Reviewed Electronic/Dance Album on the website of the 2000–09 decade, one position below her debut album
Arular. The first artist signed to the label was
Baltimore rapper
Rye Rye, who performed with M.I.A. at the
Diesel XXX party at Pier 3 in
Brooklyn in October 2008 where it was revealed that M.I.A. was pregnant with her first child. During her performance at the
2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival, M.I.A. announced it was her "last show ever", following by cancelling a British tour and saying she would then focus on recording new material. However, a few days afterwards
Danny Boyle called her, wanting her to collaborate with
A. R. Rahman in the score of his film
Slumdog Millionaire. The result was the song "
O... Saya", for which M.I.A. was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Song and a
World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film for the song. M.I.A. was due to perform at the
Oscars ceremony two weeks after her Grammy Award performance, but could not as she had just given birth to her son. M.I.A. is the
first person of Asian descent to be nominated for an Oscar and Grammy award in the same year.
2009–2011: Maya in August 2009 At the
2009 BRIT Awards in February, M.I.A. was a nominee for Best British Female Artist. Seeking to promote new, underground music with N.E.E.T., M.I.A. signed more bands including Baltimore musician
Blaqstarr, indie rock band
Sleigh Bells and visual artist Jaime Martinez by late 2009. In August 2009, M.I.A. began composing and recording her third studio album in a home studio section in her Los Angeles house. In January 2010, M.I.A. posted her video for the song "
Space". While composing it, she helped write a song with
Christina Aguilera called "
Elastic Love" for Aguilera's album
Bionic. By April 2010, the song and music video/short film "
Born Free" were leaked online. The video-film short was directed by
Romain Gavras and written by M.I.A., depicting genocide against red-haired adolescents being forced to run across a minefield and caused controversy due to its violent content. The video was removed from YouTube the same day it was released, then reinstated with an age restriction, then removed once more. Although not an official single, the song charted in Sweden and the United Kingdom. M.I.A.'s third album,
Maya — stylised as
ΛΛ Λ Y Λ — was released on 23 June 2010 in Japan with bonus tracks before its release in other countries.
Maya became M.I.A.'s highest charting album globally. Its release in the US was delayed by two weeks. A more internet-inspired album illustrating how a
multimedia artist worked within the music industry, elements of
industrial music were incorporated into M.I.A.'s sound for the first time, and it was seen as a stylistic shift towards the more experimental. She described the album in an interview with
Dazed & Confused as a mix of "babies, death, destruction and powerlessness". "
Steppin' Up", "
Teqkilla", and "
Tell Me Why" were also released as promotional singles exclusively on
iTunes in the days leading to the release of
Maya, with "Teqkilla" reaching the top 100 in Canada on digital downloads alone. during the
Maya Tour, 2011 following the release of her
Vicki Leekx mixtapeThe video for "XXXO" was released online in August. M.I.A. hinted in an interview to
Blitz that a music video is being made with director
Spike Jonze for the single "Teqkilla." She completed her live tour dates on the
Maya Tour in summer of 2011. From 2000 until 2010, she directed the video for
Elastica single "Mad Dog God Dam" and videos for her songs "
Bird Flu", "
Boyz", "S.U.S. (Save Ur Soul)", "Space" and "
XXXO" as well as personally choosing the directors for the videos of her songs "
Galang" and "
Sunshowers", which she described in 2005 and again in 2011 as being her favourite video experience and favourite video adaptation of a song of hers, in her words , "If you watch only one of my videos, please try "Sunshowers", "
Jimmy," "
Born Free," and "
Bad Girls.", a video inspired by YouTube videos of car stunts and photographs, including one of an Arab female trucker, from the Middle East, which she described as her second favourite music video. She directed a video for
Rye Rye's "
Bang". She judged in the Music Video category at the inaugural
Vimeo Festival & Awards in New York in October 2010. M.I.A. released her second
mixtape,
Vicki Leekx, on 31 December 2010, and followed this with
Internet Connection: The Remixes, an EP to a bonus track from
Maya in January 2011. M.I.A. performed on the song "C.T.F.O." on
SebastiAn's album
Total. On 21 April 2011, it was reported that M.I.A. had been in the studio with
Chris Brown, the
Cataracs,
Swizz Beatz and
Polow da Don. On 24 July 2011, the day after
Amy Winehouse's death, M.I.A. uploaded a previously unreleased
Maya/
Vicki Leekx demo titled "27" to her SoundCloud account. The song was released as a tribute to the
27 Club.
2012–2014: Matangi M.I.A. co-wrote the song "
Give Me All Your Luvin'" with
Madonna and
Nicki Minaj for the album
MDNA and performed it at the
Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. Controversially, instead of singing the lyric "shit" in the song, M.I.A. extended the
middle finger to the camera. The NFL responded by filing a lawsuit suing M.I.A. for millions in damages and demanding a public apology M.I.A. and her legal team responded by saying that the league's claim of "wholesomeness" in the lawsuit is hypocritical, since the NFL itself has had multiple situations of their own players and coaches behaving badly as well as health problems within the league, particularly
concussions. In her statement, M.I.A. said, "They're basically [saying] it's OK for me to promote being sexually exploited as a female, than to display empowerment, female empowerment, through being punk rock. That's what it boils down to, and I'm being sued for it." M.I.A. is also featured in "B-Day Song", another song included on MDNA. The first buzz track of her fourth album, "
Bad Girls", taken from her
Vicki Leekx mixtape, premiered on 30 January 2012, was released globally the day after, and was followed by a music video directed by
Romain Gavras on 3 February 2012. From her 2018 documentary
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., she revealed that she did not know Madonna planned to release the music video for "
Give Me All Your Luvin'", about 10 minutes apart on the same day she would release "
Bad Girls" (cited from
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. by Steve Loveridge, 2018, at 1:14:49 ). This received nominations for Video of the Year at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards and at the 55th Grammy Awards. The song became one of M.I.A.'s most successful singles, charting in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Canada, United States, Switzerland, South Korea and Belgium. On 29 April 2012 she posted a preview of a new song to
YouTube, titled "Come Walk With Me". The full version of Come Walk With Me was shared one and a half year later, in September 2013. M.I.A. officially signed to
Jay-Z's
Roc Nation management in May 2012. Rihanna welcomed her to the family, tweeting, "welcome home MIA." She guested during Jay-Z's set at the Radio 1 Festival in Hackney on 23 June 2012. In October 2012, M.I.A. released an autobiographical book titled
M.I.A. documenting "the five years of M.I.A. art that spans across three LPs: Arular, Kala, and Maya." in 2014|alt=|250x250px
Matangi, was recorded across the world with different collaborators. In relation to her previous albums, she described her fourth as "basically all of them together", akin to an anthology. The album was released on
Interscope and M.I.A.'s label N.E.E.T. Recordings. Release dates of 31 January 2013 and later, 15 April 2013 M.I.A. later revealed that the original project for
Matangi was not accepted by Interscope, which claimed that the record was "too positive". "
Bring the Noize", produced by French producer
Surkin and
Switch, was announced as the second single and was released on 17 June 2013. Soon after the single was released, the official video for "Bring the Noize" premiered on 25 June via Noisey. On 9 August 2013, the album received an official release date of 5 November 2013 after M.I.A. threatened to leak the album due to the numerous delays by Interscope.
Matangi received generally positive reviews from music critics. In its first week of release, the album sold 15,000 copies and peaked at number 23 on the
Billboard 200, falling to number 90 in its second week. On 31 December 2013, M.I.A. announced that she was leaving Roc Nation.
2015–2019: AIM and Matangi/Maya/M.I.A On 13 July 2015, M.I.A. released a five-minute video titled "Matahdatah Scroll 01 Broader Than a Border" which features two of her tracks:
Matangis "Warriors" and a new track "
Swords". The music is sampled from
Yo Yo Honey Singh's Manali Trance. The video was filmed in
India and
West Africa and shows different forms of dancing in those regions. On 27 November 2015, M.I.A. released "
Borders" as her new single on iTunes, prior to that her new single was announced via her Instagram account. Serving as both a rallying cry and a call for compassion, the track mocks first world problems and shares her views on the escalating global refugee crisis. The self-directed video that accompanied its release shows her joining
"those attempting to flee their homes by cramming on boats, wading in the ocean and climbing barbed-wire fences". In late February 2016, she released "Boom ADD", an expanded version of the "Boom Skit", which appeared on M.I.A.'s fourth studio album
Matangi; it is a
diss-track to the NFL's lawsuit of her performance at the
Super Bowl XLVI. On 9 September 2016, she released her fifth studio album
AIM to mixed reviews, with "Poc Still A Ryda", a lyrical mix of the songs on the album, preceding the album's release. On 8 February 2017, she released a new song, along with a music video, entitled "
P.O.W.A", a previously unreleased song from her recording sessions for
AIM. In 2018,
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. was released, a 90-minute documentary film chronicling M.I.A.'s rise to fame and political activism surrounding the
Sri Lankan Civil War. Directed and produced by Steve Loveridge, the film premiered at the
2018 Sundance Film Festival and later saw a wide release in select theatres in the U.K. and the U.S. in September 2018. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at Sundance. Following the film's release on digital platforms in December 2018, M.I.A. premiered the official music video for "Reload", a previously unreleased song originally written with
Justine Frischmann in 2004 for
Arular, which appears on the film's soundtrack.
2020–2025: Mata On 31 January 2020, M.I.A launched a
Patreon page to fund new music, saying that her new album is "nearly finished". On 22 March 2020, M.I.A. released "OHMNI 202091", her first song in three years, and suggested that a new record would arrive the same year. On 9 September, she shared a standalone song titled "CTRL" on her website. She was featured alongside
Young Thug on the single "
Franchise" by rapper
Travis Scott, which was released on 25 September 2020. The song debuted at number one on the US
Billboard Hot 100, earning M.I.A. her first number-one single on the chart. On 1 November 2021, M.I.A. announced in an Instagram post that her sixth album is called
Mata. As to the concept of the album, she described it as a way "to reflect who I am, what we want to build." M.I.A. released a single titled "Babylon" on Friday, 12 November. The single was released alongside the rappers 2010 mixtape
Vicki Leekx, sold as
NFTs to raise money for the
Courage Foundation. An accompanying music video was released on her website ohmni.com and features video footage of M.I.A. earlier in her life. On 26 May 2022, M.I.A. shared the lead single from
Mata on
The Zane Lowe Show, titled "
The One". The second single from the album, "
Popular", was released on 12 August 2022 along with its official music video.
Mata was released on 14 October 2022. In December 2023 the mixtape
Bells Collection appeared. A standalone single, "Armour", was released in January 2025. Another single, "Safe", and its accompanying music video, was released in June 2025.
2026–present: M.I.7 On 7 April 2026, M.I.A. announced that her seventh album,
M.I.7, would be released on 17 April and released its lead single "Everything". During her 2 May set in
Dallas while opening for
Kid Cudi, M.I.A. was booed after calling herself a
Republican and making a comment about potential illegal immigrants in the audience. On 4 May, Kid Cudi kicked M.I.A. off the tour, saying "I won't have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase." ==Artistry==