Mediaboss Marketing

British-Sri Lankan rapper MIA is now pretty much known for making controversial remarks. She has come under fire several times for stirring up drama with her conflicting and problematic opinions.

The 44-year-old musician recently claimed that British Vogue had pulled a feature on her because of the remarks she made about vaccines for COVID-19. Earlier last month, the 'Paper Planes' singer said on her social media that she would "choose death" over a coronavirus vaccine. On April 22, she posted a series of screenshots on her Instagram handle of a textual conversation with an unidentified person that informed her British Vogue editor, Edward Enninful had canceled his offer for a feature about her in Vogue's upcoming issue. The post has since been deleted.

The message highlighted the British Vogue editor saying: "Considering August is an issue where were chronicling the struggles of the NHS to cope while a vaccine is tried to be made we dont feel we can have her involved. It just wouldnt be right. All of our issues July-September will be supporting the frontline healthcare workers and we need to be respectful of them and all they are doing until a vaccine exists."

In a lengthy caption accompanying her post, MIA claimed that British Vogue had disregarded her championing for healthcare and mockingly thanked the fashion magazine: "Dear Vogue, Thank you for really being understanding. Thank you for not forgetting that I was helping Jeremy Corbyn fight for the NHS, when everyone voted Boris. Thank you for not forgetting that I stood with Tamils when the Sri Lankan government was bombing UN civilian hospitals, taking financial /career hit."

"Thank you for not forgetting that I live to speak for immigrants who hold up the healthcare systems of the west. Thank you for acknowledging that choice is a liberty I choose to exercise and fight for, thank you for giving me the time to research how many people's lives have been affected by enforced vaccines across many African countries. Especially causing infertility in African women," she added. "Thank you for considering me for the feature however I'm going to be busy researching ..... won't be able to make it."

The singer, whose real name is Mathangi 'Maya' Arulpragasam, went on to frame her opinion on the comments against immunization saying, "Anti vaxer [sic] is your term. It didnt exist before this binary addiction everyone has to separate everything into this and that. Anti this anti that. I prefer to not make everything so black and white."

"Im sure theres [sic] variety of doctors researchers and labs and counties [sic] who understand whats happening, Im sure there are good drugs and bad drugs out there. Just doing research isnt anti anything but pro respecting the process. Btw how many vaccines are you prepared to have? One a year? 10 a month? 2 a year? Lack of discussion is censorship," she added.

In March, she responded in the affirmative to a fan, who asked her via Twitter if she was an anti-vaxxer after she tweeted, "If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I'm gonna choose death." Her comments came after she revealed that her 11-year-old son Ikyhyd once they suffered side-effects from a vaccination before starting school. "In America they made me vaccinate my child before the school admission. It was the hardest thing. To not have a choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 (sic)," she said.

The singer also opined that the pandemic persisting at the moment was a man-made profit, and insisted that people are not "gonna die" from contracting the virus and don't need to "stress the medical systems," if they fall ill.

However, this isn't the first time that MIA has been scrutinized for unfavorable remarks. Here are some other instances where she drew attention courtesy of her controversial doings.

In March, MIA added fuel to a baseless claim about the supposed connection of 5G to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. She took her social media to spark the conspiracy theory and it spread like wildfire among Britons who ended up vandalizing several mobile phone masts around the country. She then tweeted a picture of a burning mast and captioned it saying, "They should just turn it off till after the pandemic."

She later said that she didn't believe the two were related, however, she said, "I think [5G] can confuse or slow the body down in healing process as body is learning to cope with new singles wavelength s [sic] frequency etc @ same time as Cov."

In 2017, MIA tweeted: "Can you imagine if the music industry Harvey Weinsteined people? Especially number on genre in pop-hip hop?"

Her tweet infuriated several netizens who slammed her for her insensitive remarks and apparently that wasn't the first time she had been accused of making comments against black sentiments. Hip-hop's demographic has been constantly undergoing change, however, according to Uproxx, but it still largely considered as a 'black' genre. Rapper Azealia Banks alleged that the 'Bad Girls' singer was trying to take credit for black culture when she was "clearly quite anti-Black"

In April 2016, MIA sat down to chat with the Evening Standard, where she candidly spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement in America. Its interesting that in America the problem youre allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter, said MIA. Its not a new thing to me its what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyonc or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? Thats a more interesting question.

The comments also resulted in the Afropunk Festival dropping MIA as the headlining act that year. The festival was slated to be held in London, and the organizers revealed later in an official statement: "After discussing the situation with the artist and the community, a decision was agreed upon by all involved that MIA will no longer headline Afropunk London." The Festival unveiling MIA as the headliner for the festival that was held on September 24, was met with severe backlash from festival-goers in light of her ES interview. Soon after the decision was made, MIA took to her Twitter to say, "Sorry Im not doin Afropunk. Ive been told to stay in my lane."

In 2012, the hip-hop singer appeared in Madonna's Super Bowl half-time show, albeit for a very small part. However, she still managed to draw extra attention to herself. Despite the knowledge that the NFL had imposed stringent rules with regard to performances after the Janet Jackson 'nipple gate' incident in 2004, MIA made headlines by flipping her middle fingers at the cameras. NBC was a tad too late to censor her finger and by that time, she'd been seen on national television across the country, flipping the bird at the Super Bowl. The NFL later sued her for $1.5 million for breach of contract and it was settled in 2014, the terms remaining private.

Prior to her disastrous Super Bowl appearance, the 'Sexodus' singer had trouble stepping foot on US soil. MIA had previously made some controversial statements about conflict in her parent's native country of Sri Lanka and also alleged her father was linked to the terrorist group, Tamil Tigers, which caused her major immigration issues every time she applied for a US visa.

See the original post here:
The Mystery of MIA: From THAT NFL lawsuit to anti-vaccine stance, the rapper is the girl who kicks the hornets - MEAWW