After delivering her career-spanning book, beloved rapper M.I.A. seemed poised to drop her upcoming Matangi album. That's why we're sad to report that the record has been delayed.
Pitchfork reports that the album will not come out in December as initially planned. They do, however, point to a recent Paper cover story, where M.I.A. dishes on the album's concept, which was born while she was working on an "architectural piece" for Kerala, India's upcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
While she was there, she discovered the goddess named Matangi.
"When I went to India, I was looking on Google for stuff that was the color of a certain green, and that's when this green goddess, Matangi, popped up," she recalls. "I was like, that's weird, the whole time I've been alive on this planet, my mom never mentioned where my name came from. Matangi was the goddess of knowledge and the arts — music, art, dancing, spoken word. When they invented this mythology 4,000 years ago, the concept of someone being about all those things was normal."
The artist goes on to point out the many ways she feels kinship with the deity, including the fact that Matangi's mantra is "aim" (or M.I.A. backwards), she's the patron goddess of outcasts and the disenfranchised and, most tellingly, "her Mudra... which is basically like all these yoga movements on your hands, is the middle finger."
Stay tuned for more information on Matangi as it becomes available. For now, you can check out a sample of the song "Come Walk With Me" below.
Pitchfork reports that the album will not come out in December as initially planned. They do, however, point to a recent Paper cover story, where M.I.A. dishes on the album's concept, which was born while she was working on an "architectural piece" for Kerala, India's upcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
While she was there, she discovered the goddess named Matangi.
"When I went to India, I was looking on Google for stuff that was the color of a certain green, and that's when this green goddess, Matangi, popped up," she recalls. "I was like, that's weird, the whole time I've been alive on this planet, my mom never mentioned where my name came from. Matangi was the goddess of knowledge and the arts — music, art, dancing, spoken word. When they invented this mythology 4,000 years ago, the concept of someone being about all those things was normal."
The artist goes on to point out the many ways she feels kinship with the deity, including the fact that Matangi's mantra is "aim" (or M.I.A. backwards), she's the patron goddess of outcasts and the disenfranchised and, most tellingly, "her Mudra... which is basically like all these yoga movements on your hands, is the middle finger."
Stay tuned for more information on Matangi as it becomes available. For now, you can check out a sample of the song "Come Walk With Me" below.
