I have such mixed feelings about M.I.A. I think she’s legitimately talented, like, crazy-talented. She’s probably a musical genius. I don’t mind that she’s political, although I could take or leave her political stances for the most part (and half the time I question whether she really knows what she’s talking about). But I also think M.I.A. has issues. Issues with men, issues with life, issues with the chip on her shoulder. She seems self-defeating sometimes – like she’s just looking for a fight, looking for someone to alienate or create a beef with.

All of that came to a head in M.I.A.’s new interview with Rolling Stone, which was supposed to be about the ten-year anniversary of her album Arular. She ended up doing a lengthy diatribe about politics, her beef with her ex-boyfriend Diplo and an incident with Oprah Winfrey… which I’m not sure I really believe happened the way M.I.A. says it happened. As I said, she goes on and on, so you can read the full piece here. Here are some of the Diplo and Oprah parts.

Early success: “By the time I hit America and actually found out the press aspect of it and the success aspect of it and the fact that there’s gonna be, you know, tons of people at the shows. . . and I had an encore at Coachella. That had never happened except for like, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, and it only happened like four times in the history of Coachella. By the time that was happening to me, I was with Diplo and he basically just like shat on every good thing that was happening to me, and I just didn’t enjoy it because if I was on a cover of a magazine he’ll be like, “What do you want to do, like be on the dentist waiting room table? Like, is that what a magazine is for? It’s corny. Like, don’t do magazines.”

Diplo was an emotionally abusive monster: “When I got signed by Interscope, he literally smashed my hotel room and broke all the furniture because he was so angry I got picked up by a major label and it was the corniest thing in the world that could possibly happen. And then Missy Elliott called me for the first time in 2005 to work with me on her record, and I’m sure we had a massive fight about that — the fact that I was talking to anyone who was, like, popular. I wish I enjoyed it because I had this person on my shoulder the whole time saying, “It’s sh-t, it’s sh-t, it’s sh-t. You shouldn’t be on the charts. You shouldn’t be in the magazines and you should not be going to interviews. You should not be doing collaborations with famous people. You should be an underground artist.” So the whole two years I was with him, I just let him dictate. I basically had this man dictate to me how everything in America that I experienced was completely, like, irrelevant and it was nothing.”

Diplo was jelly: “Oh, 100 percent. It’s only now when I look back at it in 2015, I can see that he was just jealous and he couldn’t wait to be Taylor Swift’s best friend and date Katy Perry. But at that time I believed him. I just felt like he was right, and he was something of a political, righteous person with some values. I didn’t realize it was just jealousy.”

2005 was better than 2015: “At that time when Arular happened the world was so much more cultured. We had way better f–king music. People were having way better sex. People were eating way better food. It’s like we had progression, and now it’s like all we have is electronic music. People have to take drugs to pretend they’re having a great time, and the world has become way more aggressive and backwards and gentrified. Artistically, we’re not setting off enough fireworks in the art scene. There’s no f–king fireworks in the fashion scene.”

Her Oprah story: “In 2009, Time nominated me for one of the most influential people of the 21st century or something and I met Oprah at that party. And I was like, “Hey, people are gonna f–king die in my country. Like, please pay attention.” And she was like, “You’re sh-t because you were rude to Lady Gaga and I’m not talking to you. And I’m gonna interview Tom Cruise jumping on my sofa, so f–k off.” Yeah, she didn’t talk to me. She shut me down. She took that photo of me, but she was just like, “I can’t talk to you because you’re crazy and you’re a terrorist.” And I’m like, “I’m not. I’m a Tamil and there are people dying in my country and you have to like look at it because you’re f–king Oprah and every American told me you’re going to save the world.”

[From Rolling Stone]

Eh. Do I believe that Diplo is a tiny little jealous douchebag who emotionally abused his girlfriend more than a decade ago? FOR SURE. Diplo is a well-known douchebag and yes, I totally believe he was jealous of M.I.A. blowing up before him. But the Oprah story? No. I don’t believe it went down like that. I’m not an Oprah apologist by any means, but I simply don’t believe that Oprah would A) know M.I.A. on sight at a Time Magazine event, B) know M.I.A.’s politics well enough to form a negative opinion of her and C) call M.I.A. a “terrorist” to her face or behind her back. Now, did M.I.A. go up to Oprah and start jabbering like a crazy person about some political situation? Probably. Did Oprah try to politely shut her down? Probably.

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