M.I.A. (rapper) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
M.I.A.
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| மாயா | |
M.I.A. in 2016
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Mathangi Arulpragasam (மாதங்கிஅருள்பிரகாசம்)
18 July 1975 London, England
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| Other names | Maya |
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| Education | Central Saint Martins, College of Art and Design |
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| Years active | 2000–present |
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| Children | 1 |
| Parent(s) |
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| Relatives | Kali Arulpragasam (sister) |
| Awards | Full list |
| Honours | MBE |
| Musical career | |
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Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam MBE (Tamil: மாயா; born 18 July 1975), known by her stage name M.I.A. (an initialism for both "Missing in Action" and "Missing in Acton"), is a British rapper, record producer, and singer. Her music combines elements of alternative, dance, electronic, hip hop and world music with electronic instruments and samples.
M.I.A.'s accolades include two American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) awards and two MTV Video Music Awards. She is the first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for an Academy Award and Grammy Award in the same year. She was named one of the defining artists of the 2000s decade by Rolling Stone, and one of the 100 most influential people of 2009 by Time. Esquire ranked M.I.A. on its list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. According to Billboard, she was one of the "Top 50 Dance/Electronic Artists of the 2010s". M.I.A. was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for her services to music.
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Early life=
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam was born on 18 July 1975, in Hounslow, London, the daughter of Arul Pragasam, a Sri Lankan Tamil engineer, writer, and activist, and his wife, Kala, a seamstress. When she was six months old, her family moved to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, where her brother Sugu 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 Arulpragasam's life were marked by displacement caused by the Sri Lankan Civil War. Her family went into hiding from the Sri Lankan Army, and Arulpragasam had little contact with her father during this period. She has described her family as living in "big-time" poverty during her childhood but also recalls some of her happiest memories from growing up in Jaffna. Maya 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, Arulpragasam's mother relocated herself and 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, nine-year-old Arulpragasam's primary school was destroyed in a government raid.
Her mother then returned with her children back to London in 1986, a week before Arulpragasam's 11th birthday, where they were housed as refugees. Her father arrived on the island and became an independent peace mediator between the two sides of the civil war in the late 1980s–2010. Arulpragasam spent the rest of her childhood and teenage years living on the Phipps Bridge Estate in the Mitcham district of south London, where she learned to speak English, while her mother brought the children up on a modest income. Arulpragasam entered the final year of primary school in the autumn of 1986 and quickly mastered the English language.
While living in England and raising her children, Arulpragasam's mother became a Christian in 1990 and worked as a seamstress for the Royal Family for much of her career. She worked from her home in London's Tooting area. Arulpragasam had a difficult relationship with her father, due to his political activities in the 1980s and complete absence during much of her life. Prior to the release of the first album, which Arulpragasam had named after her father, he emailed her: "This is Dad. Change the title of your album. I'm really proud. Just read about you in the Sri Lanka Times. Dad." She chose not to change the album title. Arulpragasam 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.
Career
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M.I.A. started out as a visual artist, filmmaker and designer in 2000, and began her recording career in 2002. One of the first few acts to come to public attention through the Internet, she saw early fame as an underground artist in early 2004 with her singles "Sunshowers" and "Galang".
M.I.A.'s first two albums, Arular (2005) and Kala (2007), received widespread critical acclaim for their fusion of hip hop, electronic, and world musics. The single "Paper Planes" from Kala reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 and sold over four million copies. Her third album Maya (2010) was preceded by the controversial single-short film "Born Free". Maya was her best-charting effort, reaching the top 10 on several charts. Her fourth studio album, Matangi (2013), included the single "Bad Girls", which won accolades at the MTV Video Music Awards. M.I.A. released her fifth studio album, AIM, in 2016. She scored her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single as a featured artist on Travis Scott's "Franchise" (2020), and two years later, released her sixth studio album Mata, featuring lead single "The One".
Musical style and influences
M.I.A.'s music features styles such as electro, reggae, rhythm and blues, alternative rock, hip hop, grime, rap ballads and Asian folk and references to her musical influences such as Missy Elliott, Tamil film music, Lou Reed, the Pixies, Timbaland, Beastie Boys, and London Posse. She was a childhood fan of Boney M, composer A. R. Rahman and pop artists Michael Jackson and Madonna, also she has cited Björk as an inspiration and has been influenced by Public Enemy, Malcolm McLaren and The Clash.
Activism
M.I.A. attributes much of her success to the "homeless, rootlessness" of her early life. Due to her and her family being displaced from Sri Lanka because of the Civil War, M.I.A. has become a refugee icon. The EMP Museum's 2008 Pop Conference featured paper submissions and discussions on M.I.A. presented on the theme of "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change." She has used networking sites such as Twitter and MySpace to discuss and highlight the human rights abuses and war crimes that Sri Lanka is accused of perpetrating against Tamils, citing news articles, human rights group reports, government reports, her own experiences as a child and on her return to the island in 2001 to support calls for a ceasefire. M.I.A. has also used a great deal of tiger print and imagery, a symbol for the Tamil Tigers in both album artwork and music videos, such as seen in "Galang". Being the only Tamil widely known in Western media, M.I.A. has discussed how she feels a responsibility to represent the Tamil minority. M.I.A. has spoken of discussions with witnesses during and after the war as reinforcing the need for international intervention to protect and provide justice to Tamil people.
Philanthropy
M.I.A. supports a number of charities, both publicly and privately. She funded Youth Action International to help youth break out of cycles of violence and poverty in war torn African communities and set up school-building projects in Liberia in 2006. She supports the Unstoppable Foundation, co-funding the establishment of the Becky Primary School in Liberia. During her visit to Liberia she met the then President of Liberia and rehabilitated ex-child soldiers. She also appeared as part of a humanitarian mission there, hosting a "4Real" TV-series documentary on the post-war situation in the country with activist Kimmie Weeks. Following her performance at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards afterparty, she donated her $100,000 performance fee to building more schools in the country, telling the crowd, "It costs $52,000 to build a school for 1,000." Winning the 2008 Official Soundclash Championships (iPod Battle) with her "M.I.A. and Friends" team, 20% of the following year's championship ticket sales were donated to her Liberian school building projects.
M.I.A. has also donated to The Pablove Foundation to fund paediatric cancer research, aid cancer families, and improve the quality of life for children living with cancer through creative arts programmes. In 2009, she supported the "Mercy Mission to Vanni" aid ship, destined to send civilian aid from Britain to Vanni and controversially blocked from reaching its destination. The country's navy announced that it would fire on any ship that entered its waters, and M.I.A. was singled out on the Sri Lankan army's official website after the singer announced her support for the campaign. In 2011, following her performance at the Roskilde Festival, she donated from the Roskilde Festival Charity Society to help bring justice to Tamil victims of war crimes and genocide and to aid advocacy and ensure legal rights for refugees and witnesses.
Personal life
M.I.A. met DJ Diplo at the Fabric Club in London, in 2003, and the two were romantically involved for five years.
From 2006 to 2008, M.I.A. lived in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, where she met Benjamin Bronfman, an American scion of the Bronfman business family and the Lehman banking family who founded Lehman Brothers. They became engaged and she gave birth to their son, Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman, on 13 February 2009, three days after performing at the Grammy Awards. In February 2012, it was announced that she and Bronfman had separated.
M.I.A. was raised by her parents as a Hindu. However, in a 2022 interview she revealed that in 2017 she became a born-again Christian because she saw a vision of Jesus Christ.
Discography
- Arular (2005)
- Kala (2007)
- Maya (2010)
- Matangi (2013)
- AIM (2016)
- Mata (2022)
Tours
- Arular Tour (2005)
- Kala Tour (2007)
- People vs. Money Tour (2008)
- Maya Tour (2010)
- Matangi Tour (2013–2014)
- AIM Tour (2017–2018)
Honours, awards and nominations
M.I.A. is the only artist to receive nominations for all five of Academy Award, Grammy Award, Brit Award, Mercury Prize and Alternative Turner Prize, and the first artist of Sri Lankan-British descent to be nominated for an Academy and Grammy Award in the same year. She has also been nominated for an MOBO Award, MTV Video Music Award, and MTV Europe Music Award.
She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for her services to music. She accepted the title (bestowed on British citizens in recognition of their service to the arts) in honor of her mother who had "spent her life in England hand sewing thousands of medals for the Queen". In 2022, she received an honorary award from University of the Arts London for outstanding contributions to the creative industries.
Images for kids
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M.I.A. performing at Sónar on her Arular Tour
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M.I.A. performing at the Prince in Melbourne in February 2006
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M.I.A. performing at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in August 2009
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M.I.A. performing at the Zénith de Paris in 2014
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Afrikan Boy, an afrobeats and grime London MC with Nigerian roots supporting M.I.A. at the Rock en Seine Festival, 2007
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M.I.A. performing on the People vs. Money Tour
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M.I.A. speaking at Labour's Charter for the Arts launch in November 2019
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M.I.A. with then-partner Ben Bronfman (right) and Twitter founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey (left and center respectively)
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See also
In Spanish: M.I.A. (cantante) para niños
