I'm so glad everyone here in the States FINALLY caught up last year. I've tryna tell my friends about this great artist for a VERY long time now. A Grammy award, new baby (any second now) and 2 hit CD's later she has truly arrived. Wildly inventive AND creative (she's a visual artist too), she's the type of artist that makes me wanna make music again.

Check out her Wiki bio

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam (Tamil: மாதங்கி 'மாயா' அருள்பிரகாசம்) (born 17 July 1977), better known by her stage name M.I.A., is a British songwriter, record producer, vocalist and artist.

An accomplished visual artist by 2002, she came to prominence in early 2004 through file-sharing of her singles "Galang" and "Sunshowers" on the Internet. She released her Mercury Prize-nominated debut album Arular in 2005. Her second album, Kala, was released in 2007 and gained her mainstream chart success and a Grammy Award nomination for Record of the Year in the US with her single "Paper Planes" (2008). She has also worked on the soundtrack for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which she has received an Academy Award nomination.

Her compositions have been noted to encompass various genres, often with political lyricism and artwork. M.I.A. has described her music style as being "other."[3] In addition to her work as a graphic designer, providing artwork and photography for releases and as a director of music videos, she has also experimented with documentary film and in 2008 released a collection of her fashion designs. M.I.A. is the founder of the record label N.E.E.T.