Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam better known by her stage name M.I.A is a British-Sri Lankan recording artist, songwriter, painter and director. Arulpragasam began her career in 2000 as a visual artist, filmmaker and designer in London before beginning her recording career in 2002 and hitting it off with the songs “Paper Planes” and Grammy nominated “Bad Girls”.
Her new video for “Double Bubble Trouble” is the latest in her line of controversies and is shot typically in an MIA style. Flashing colours, a lot of smoking and loads of guns. After performing it on Late Night with Seth Meyers last week and releasing a smashing remix of Beyonce’s “Flawless”, she has now released a homemade-style video with standard Matangi aesthetic.
The video was filmed in London on a pretty low budget and sees a whole melee of visual stimuli flashing throughout the song. Off the album Matangi, the video mocks radical groups via metaphorical imagery, a concept very relevant to her childhood, when her father was a human rights activist in Sri Lanka. Despite being cut-off from her father at a very young age, she named her debut album Arular, after him, even after he forbade her to.
She sent “Double Bubble Trouble” to her label, which held the video for four days without releasing it. Self-directed and full of political overtones, she then personally uploaded the video, but Universal Music Group blocked it citing copyright violations. After an intense tirade to her fans on Twitter, however, the video has been made available again. This is not the first controversial video of hers, nor is it the first time there has been tension between her and the record label. During the release of her fourth studio album, a documentary based on her life was pulled down from YouTube due to similar violations. She even made it famous at the 2012 SuperBowl by showing the middle finger on camera.
