MIA's next album will be "odd", "musical" and free of "gimmicks", she revealed last week — and it's due this summer.
The British singer and recent mum has hauled in most of the usual suspects, including producers Blaqstarr, Switch and Diplo, not to mention a chorus of Filipino tech-support workers.
"Last year I said, ‘I'm going to quit, I'm going to go and have a baby and make a [documentary] movie,'" MIA told Rolling Stone, "and here I am".
Two years after the release of Kala, the London-born MC is putting the finishing touches on an as yet untitled record, something Diplo described as "[rapper] Gucci Mane meets Animal Collective".
"I wanted it to be, like, no gimmicks," she told NME. "It's my third album, and I have to confront whether I am a musician or not... I wanted to make something that isn't trendy just for three months, or the length of a DJ's attention span."
At the beginning of the last decade, MIA wasn't even a recording artist. "I was on the dole," she confessed. "I got my first job, but it wasn't an ongoing job: I got to do Elastica's album cover in 2000."
At 34, she now wants her music to be "honest" — and more thoughtful. "The last album, I didn't actually sit anywhere long enough for it to really be in my life and to really think about it," she said. "I came up talking s**t about Bush, and it's great that it's changed, but I don't know how much, and I'm exploring that.
"I don't want it to be gimmicky, silly or hipstery," she insisted. "I just want to be real."
To this end, she is using a, er, gimmick — sampling actual Verizon tech-support workers. "I was having issues with my Cable Wireless, and I was on the phone for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music. Could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?' Ten phone calls later, I have internet that sticks and a song."
The track is allegedly called I'm Down Like Your Internet Connection.
But perhaps we shouldn't hold our breaths for this to actually make its way to our turntables. "Every time I make plans," MIA admitted, "totally the opposite happens."
