The last time M.I.A. was in the news was a year ago, when she overshadowed Madonna and tightrope afro guy during the Super Bowl halftime show by flipping the world the bird. It was glorious. It also cemented her image as a “bad girl” (also, she has a song called “Bad Girls”), at least according to M.I.A.’s label, Interscope, who asked her to rework her upcoming fourth album, Matangi, to make it less “positive.”
“I thought I’d finished it. I finished it and then I handed the record in, like a couple of months ago,” she said. But apparently the label didn’t think the upbeat tunes matched her public image. “At the moment, I’ve been told it’s too positive. So we’re having a bit of an issue at the label. They’re like ‘You need to like darken it up a bit’. I don’t know what it is but as soon as I work that out.”
She says she’s working on meeting Interscope’s demands: “I’m taking my time to decide what they mean. It’s an interesting one for me. It’s like, ‘We just built you up as the public enemy No. 1 and now you’re coming out with all this positive stuff.'” (Via)
The album’s now scheduled to be released on April 15th, at which point M.I.A. will go on her label-named worldwide tour, I’m the Baddest Bitch In the Whole World and There’s No One More Badass Than I, and Should You Think There Is, There Isn’t and I Will Fight You to Prove My Point Angry Face. Catchy, no?
