Was M.I.A. always a political musician without a positive stance?
Popular opinion on M.I.A. is that she fell off after going antivax and MAGA and currently she had the most hype in years for Fantano's 'not good' review and Kid Cudi kicking her out from tour. However, after I watched this video on her politics with a baggage of listening to some M.I.A. music, but not following her as a public figure and I learnt that throughout her career Maya took stance:
- against struggles (genocide as she perceives) of Tamils from Sri Lankan army
- against third-world inequality
- against bad treatment of immigrants and stereotypes about them
- against visa policy
- against human struggles in immigration crisis
- against governmental and corporate control of mainstream media and showbiz and any form of censorship
- against phone and internet surveillance
- against Superbowl show stuff treating her badly
- against vaccination
- against 5G network radiation
- for self-care and medical care of immigrants (funny as their doctor definitely asks them to vaccinate)
- for a geometric belief system
- for Christianity and Jesus (but in a weird narcissistic way)
Though many of things she condemned (especially before 2020) deserve condemnation, don't we see a pattern? Doesn't she come off as a consistently unsatisfied person desperately trying to influence and change bad things around the world, but no propositions, no positive platform or a system of views she would endorse? I'm pretty sure she put these tigers in 'Galang' video because she was traumatised and pissed by Sri Lankan army war crimes in Jaffna and Tamil Tigers were against the army (her family history and especially cousin fighting and dying for Tigers obviously contributed too). However she couldn't even state if she was for independent Eelam or how else she believed the crisis could be resolved − and after 2010 never revisited the subject again because there was no loud topic left to protest about. Her current position is a logical consequence of this negativist view she always held on things. She seems a Diane Nguyen of music world who never found her Guy (or anyone/anything to balance her mental state). Or did I get it wrong and her activism is not properly represented in a forementioned video?
This is not to take away that she made two fantastic visionary albums and a more controversial yet a very influential for hyperpop third one. Her works with Diplo and Switch pulled the absolute best out of both collaborators. Sad she moved to American producers since 'Matangi', to my mind they never suited her as well as her mind was apparently becoming more and more tangled in these years.