Friday Quote: M.I.A.

"I think it [hip-hop] did save my life. It made me look outside of where I was. When I was living in the estate, I used to think the reason other kids thought I was shit was because I was not like them, and that I'd have to go out and aspire to be like them. Either I could spend my life trying to fit in with them and make them like me or find something else that was my own. At the time, hip-hop was just taking off and it was through the underground and I was hearing it.

The only person I was getting it through was this guy who lived on one side of my flat; my radio had been burgled by people who were beating me up on the other side! So there was a 14-year-old boy on this side and a 19-year-old boy on the other side and I was like 11 or 12, I could barely speak English. People started giving us stuff for our flat-- we'd just got it-- and so we had a video and a telly and I always slept with the radio on. I was listening to Paula Abdul, that's all I was listening to-- mainstream radio. And I'd be like, "Man, this is what the kids at school are listening to--Madonna and Bananarama and stuff."
--M.I.A. (DJ and musicmaker Maya Arulpragasam, in an interview with Pitchfork Media)