M.I.A. doesn’t need a visa, just inspiration

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A layer cake of musical influences
However, not being able to record in the United States with A-list producers may have enhanced her artistic endeavors, as she layered her album input from far-flung places.

“India gave me the bulk of it musically, just building the elements, and then Trinidad just gave me loads of inspiration to put those elements together and create songs and light a certain vibe,” she says.

Of course, it’s not just the sound that makes the album unique — it’s the words the accompany it, and they are still fierce. On “Kala,” she references warlords, raps with the artist Afrikan Boy about poverty, and talks about oppression of the world’s poor. But she’s not as blatantly political as she was on “Arular.”

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“I had to morph,” she says with a coy smile. “I’m going to get into more trouble for saying this, but it was morphing from being lyrically political into just living political and being comfortable with that. Sometimes you don’t have to shout out about stuff.

“It’s kind of like what people say about money: they say that money talks but wealth whispers, and I think you can apply that to being political.”

That approach may have paid off: early this summer, she finally gained her work visa, and celebrated by relaxing in her New York apartment.

Though it took her two years to get settled in, in the end, M.I.A. doesn’t feel as if she’s lost anything by not being in the United States. In fact, she thinks it was the United States that may have come out the loser for the delay.

“Me not being able to get into the country actually forced me to go to Africa and India, which actually works out worse for whoever wants me to shut up, because the worst thing you can do is make Africa look cool, or like make India look cool,” she says. “They just made it a step closer for a bridge to get built between modern developing countries and modern Third World and America, which is what needs to happen.”

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