M.I.A.

M.I.A.: He looks like he always has gel in it. Hold on. [to taxi driver] Can you pull over, please? I’m at Notting Hill Gate station.

Luella Bartley: "She had an unabashed in-your-face craziness that I loved, admired, and identified with."

He asked my mum, 'Why would I devote myself to one woman and three children when I could be helping thousands?' She said: 'If you even have to ask that, you should go.'One of those times, when he came home, he didn't even know what I was called.

David Hasselhoff: "M.I.A. is one of the hottest things around."

Claire Danes: "M.I.A. Sunshowers: It's impossible for me to resist dancing whenever I hear it."

M.I.A.: If he were a pop star, he’d be, like, Prince or something.

Solange Knowles: "I went to a M.I.A. show and I thought the best moment of her show, is she literally invited anyone who wanted to onstage, just the energy of, you know, being with the crowd, and its people who love your music, it feels really good." September 2008, Jimmy Kimmel Show

John Legend: "M.I.A. is killing it right now. Great beats. Distinctive voice."

GAVRAS: Yeah, he’s the best-dressed man on the planet.

I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan. They feel like they know the violence when they don't. Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it's like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier."

Krist Novoselic of Nirvana: "There's much to admire about the rapper M.I.A. She's a working mom, a dynamite performer, and a writer of songs, like "Bucky Done Gun," that command you to give the volume knob a twist. And with her outspoken political views and heart for her homeland, Mathangi Arulpragasam [sic] reflects the global consciousness of the information revolution....An ethnic Tamil, M.I.A. is a member of the minority that makes up the northern part of Sri Lanka, a country governed by the majority Sinhalese since the end of WWII. The Sinhalese-controlled government and Tamil's rebel fighters had been involved in a decades-long civil war until the rebel leader was killed and their fighters routed, thus putting an end to the conflict. M.I.A. has been giving interviews regarding the humanitarian costs of the military action, including the 300,000 displaced ethnic Tamils, many living in overcrowded camps. This reminds me of my situation in the early 1990s during the war in the former Yugoslavia. I had emerged from obscurity to play bass in the biggest band in the world. Being of Croatian heritage, I found myself speaking out about the war in the Balkans. (I lived in Yugoslavia in 1980 and have visited many times since.)...One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. We can toss this back and forth, but in the meantime too many innocents suffer. The Sri Lankan government has said that M.I.A. should stick with music and not worry about politics. It doesn't matter if she's Tamil or Sinhalese, M.I.A. is the most famous Sri Lankan in the world. She has the right to speak. I didn't know about Sri Lanka and the trouble there until M.I.A. made me aware. Her work can be political, but that aspect never seems overbearing. Thank you, Mathangi Arulpragasa, for bringing my attention to what's going on in that part of our world. And a big thanks for the great tunes as well!"

Christina Aguilera: "I just can't, 'cause I really want you guys to be surprised and to experience firsthand what I'm talking about or what I'm not talking too much about. Too soon in the game, but wrapping everything up now... I got a chance to sort of write with M.I.A. - artists that I really love."

Ruben Fleischer: "..The principle idea behind M.I.A.'s artwork is to have pretty heavy/political ideas, but to present them in a poppy candy-coated wrapper. So someone might buy her painting because it is pretty to the eye, and not necessarily consider that it is a rebellious image that she is presenting. However, after they've had it for a while, they might start to think - why do I have a pink tank on my wall? … I think that ["Galang"] is a very successful video in that we have true images of revolution playing on MTV. However, because there's lots of pretty colors and a pretty girl dancing, no one blinks an eye. Hopefully we have succeeded in subconsciously starting the revolution." May, 2005 [after directing music video for "Galang"]

I have to be true to that - I can't take certain things away. I do have a political background. I’m only in England, learning this language and building a life in this society, because of political reasons. Why would I deny that?

Nelly Furtado: "I have heard bits of the M.I.A Album and it is so cool..what a flow, what a style...and girl can dance!!!" [Listening to album Arular during the recording of Loose.]

I saw firsthand where the music we made ended up. It turned up in sterile bullshit clubs in LA, seperated from the spirit we made it in.

I'm not sure, but music now should be like sonic massage. You want to really feel it, internally. The police [sic] use sound cannons at public protests that explode people’s insides with a single note – human beings have to come up with the opposite of that.

It's important for communities to be put together on a different basis. It's really shitty that we're taught to be really patriotic when 99 percent of the shit that we wear and we use and eat and everything comes from everywhere all the time, and musically, it's the same.

Danny Boyle: "When I use somebody's song in a film, I like them to see the movie, if possible, so they know how it's used. She came into the cutting room and watched it. You get a lot of people giving you notes on films when you're making them, and most of them are rubbish, to be honest. People might think they're good. Well, she came in told me the film was very good, but said, "Do you want some notes?" She gave me two specific notes, both of which we included in the film, essentially saying, "If you do that there, you'll understand why he gets on the show." She's very smart."

Mike Shinoda: "On our first Fort Minor tour, Styles of Beyond were touring with me. [Bucky Done Gun] by M.I.A. was practically the theme song that tour. I think our crew was sick of hearing it! At any rate, I think that's what one of my favorite things about music is: those times when hearing a song reminds you of a time in your past, when it connects you directly with the memory every time you hear it. Good song."