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M.I.A. Super Bowl

The Revenge of /\/\/\Y/\

As the 2000s became the 2010s, no artist looked more poised to transform the landscape wholesale than Mathangi Arulpragasam, whom most millennials know as M.I.A. A brilliant Sri Lankan musician, political disruptor, and cultural synthesizer from London, she made music almost entirely about being exiled by birthright, about her complicated relationship with societal upheaval having an activist father with links to (but not, as oft-believed, actually in) the LTTE, about how rich music itself becomes when you look outside of spaces colonized by Western whites. Then she ate a truffle fry. It’s instructive to look back on how deeply M.I.A.’s and Kanye West’s paths diverged as the 2010s took shape. Both were cutting-edge royalty beginning in 2004, pulling just about every musically inclined pers...