M.I.A. shares teaser for new album ‘MATA’
The British rapper and singer also said that she had to wait two year for feature verses from Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj
M.I.A. has shared a teaser for her new album MATA, also claiming that she waited two years for features from Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj.
The one minute 14 second trailer appears to preview snippets from different tracks. In one song, the artist – real name Mathangi Arulpragasam – raps over a distorted heavy bass and: “I’m a traveller, time traveller / sinner of the star to a sinner of a nebula.”
Watch the teaser below.
MATA is the follow-up to 2016’s AIM and will arrive via Island Records, but does not yet have an official release date or tracklist.
In a post shared to the British singer’s Instagram story yesterday (30 August), she wrote: “Coming soon I promise. I had to wait 2 years for a Doja Cat Verse … Then a Nicki One … Then A … Never mind. If MATA isn’t out Sept I will leak it myself.”
In a video reshared to the artist’s Twitter yesterday, Minaj and American rapper BIA discussed their admiration for M.I.A., to which she responded: “Mad love for these 2. brave badass beings BARBZ + BIA.”
M.I.A. has so far previewed the album with August single ‘Popular’ and lead single ‘The One’, which came out in May.
She told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 that she was in a really happy place” when writing ‘The One’, also sharing that the forthcoming album “has two sides to it”.
“I think there’s a bit of a battle on the record. There is a bit of a clash, but the clash is, like, your ego and spirituality. Those are the clashes because, as a musician, you need some ego, otherwise you can’t do it,” she said in the interview.
“Also the genre of music that – genres I should say – is all very much like egocentric. It’s not like I’m an artist that came from gospel or something. For me, it was, like, to have that journey, and also, like, it was a significant time to discuss like Islamophobia… talking about wars in the Middle East and things like that.”
In 2020, M.I.A. secured her first Number One with the Travis Scott ‘Franchise’ collaboration. Since her last album, she’s shared several songs including ‘P.O.W.A.’ and an NFT track, ‘Babylon‘.