People
MIA (rapper) – biography, family life and other interesting facts
MIA is a British-Sri Lankan rapper, singer, songwriter, filmmaker, visual artist and record producer. Some of their hits are Bad Girls, Galang, Paper Planes, Bucky Done Gun, Matangi, Bring the Noize, Born Free and Bamboo Banga.
Aside from her music, MIA is also a vocal activist and through her music she involuntarily speaks about issues such as refugee rights, the cost of armed conflict, etc. Her activism has generated a lot of controversy due to her outspokenness. Find out more about the rapper here.
MIA (rapper) biography
MIA was born on July 18, 1975 in Hounslow, West London. Her full name at birth is Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam. Her parents are from Sri Lanka, specifically from the Tamil ethnic group. When she was only 6 months old, the family moved back to Sri Lanka, where they lived until civil war broke out in 1983.
After the outbreak of this war the family (without MIA Papa) resettled to India. The Emcee was six at the time and the family stayed in India for around five years before returning to London as refugees (still without their father). In London, MIA completed her primary education as well as her high school education. Growing up the rapper was very good at freehand drawing and as such she attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where she studied fine arts, film and video.
music career
MIA She started out as a filmmaker and artist (painter) until a friend introduced her to Justine Frischmann, one of the lead singers of British alternative rock band Elastica. The band hired her to design the cover art for their forthcoming album and to film their upcoming tour. During his tour, Frischmann gave MIA a Roland MC 505 groove box and encouraged her to make music. She immediately got to work and produced her first demo tape. The band had songs like Lady Killa, MIA and Galang. Galang, released in 2003 by independent label Showbiz Records, was MIA’s debut single and proved a hit. It landed her an XL record deal in 2004 and she released her first album, Arula, in March 2005. The album, which featured songs like Galang,
MIA is an artist who uses her song to speak about the social and political issues of our time. There’s no denying that her childhood experiences of civil war and refugee status helped make her such a musician. With her songs she speaks about topics like immigration, war, genocide and oppression of minorities. She is particularly vocal about the human rights abuses being committed against her ethnic group, the Tamils, in Sri Lanka.
family life
MIA comes from a family of five. Her father, Arul Pragasam, is a well-known political activist. He co-founded the Tamil resistance movement in his native Sri Lanka. In the 1970s and 1980s he was a prominent protester against the ruling Sinhala government’s repression of the Tamil minority. He campaigned for an independent state for the Tamil minority. Due to his rebellious activities, he was forced to stay away from his family for security reasons, and as such, MIA had to grow up mostly without her father.
Her mother, Kala, is a seamstress who worked for the royal family for much of her career. MIA cites her mother’s bravery as a source of her own courage. Her mother moved the whole family to London to escape the Civil War and had to work up to four jobs to support her three children. The rapper has two siblings, a sister named Kali Arulpragasam and Sugu, his only brother.
boyfriend or husband, is she married?
MIA previously dated American DJ and record producer Diplo. They worked together on their hit Paper Planes and their debut studio album Arular. They dated for five years before invoking their relationship. She was also engaged to musician and environmentalist Benjamin Bronfman, son of billionaire Edgar Bronfman Jr., former CEO of Warner Music Group. They met while MIA lived in Brooklyn between 2006 and 2008. They have a son together named Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman who was born on February 13, 2009. They called off their engagement in February 2012.
More interesting facts about MIA
1. MIA is one of the first artists to use the internet to become famous. When her first single came out she uploaded it to MySpace and this went a long way in getting it popular and getting her a record deal.
2. Her stage name MIA is a play on her middle name. It also stands for “Missing in Acton”. MIA used to live in an area of London known as Acton, so changed the name “Action” to “Acton”.
3. She is the first Asian person to be nominated for a Grammy and an Oscar in the same year. She achieved this feat in 2009 when her song Paper Planes was nominated for a Grammy for Best Album. She was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song for her work on O…Saya, a song on the soundtrack for the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
4. Her first album, Arular, is named after her father. Her second album Kala is named after her mother. According to her, she decided to name her first album after her father because the only thing she ever got from him was a name. When Arular was about to be released, her father emailed her saying he was proud of her and that she should change the album’s name. He probably felt that after his absence as a father, he did not deserve such an honor.
5. She is a supporter of FactsLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. She supports them because the news site confirmed what people had already said about the human rights violations against the Tamil ethnic group.
6. In a 2010 interview with NME magazine, she explained that the CIA developed Facebook and Google to monitor and control people’s personal information.
7. MIA performed at the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show alongside Madonna and Nicki Minaj. During the performance, she held up her middle finger to the camera. The NFL sued them in court for damages, and the matter was later settled out of court.
