After back and forths, legal threats and everything in-between, M.I.A. has finally confirmed that her upcoming studio album will be called ‘A.I.M.’ and will be out on September 9th.
The follow-up to 2013’s ‘Matangi’ was originally meant to land in July, but an official date finally puts to rest any sense of label walkout. But no fear to those expecting some M.I.A. to spice up July, a fresh new single ‘Go Off’, featuring and Blaqstarr, is streaming now too. Debuted with Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1, as part of an interview M.I.A. suggested again this will be her final album.
Speaking on her official website, M.I.A. talked about refugees and their treatment when announcing ‘A.I.M.’ saying:
“Survivors of war, conflict and genocide live on as IDPs and refugees, dispersed across their homelands and the globe. They embody the violence that has displaced them into the unknown, into uncertainty and into camps and council estates. Survivors crossed countless continents, countries and borders, leaving behind their homes, lives and dead: only to be rendered invisible, silent and forgotten in exile; only to be told that their bodies might have travelled but their stories have not. Their narratives are construed as exchangeable, mutable and nuisance while their bodies are considered collateral damage. Survivors are treated as a surplus people whose very presence destabilises the status quo, whose voices unsettle the known.”
The same month ‘A.I.M.’ drops, M.I.A. will headline London’s Afropunk Festival on the 24th September. So she’s definitely not M.I.A. anymore…