Following several controversies, M.I.A. is now claiming that her label Interscope “buried” her last album Matangi following a dispute with the NFL.
The album was released late in 2013 on her own N.E.E.T. sector on Interscope, and didn’t perform well chart-wise, only reaching No. 23 on the Billboard Top 200.
This mild performance on the charts was largely in part to her single “Bad Girls,” which performed best off of the album. But “Bad Girls” had been released two years earlier on her Vikki Leekx mixtape.
This past Tuesday (Aug. 16) M.I.A. began accusing her label of hindering Matangi’s performance on the charts in the wake of a scandal where she flipped off the NFL at the Superbowl. She also mentioned her former manager becoming her label head.
yeah #matangi LP got buried for various reasons - NFL , music industry baby daddy battle, my ex manager became my label head ,and politics
— M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) August 16, 2016
There were lots of s in the room . everyone puts it to yeah well u shoulda played the game. But the whole meaning of #matangi was not that — M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) August 16, 2016
M.I.A. also alleges that Interscope further wouldn’t allow Diplo’s take on “Bird Song” to be featured on her album AIM, which is slated for release on Sept. 9. The song had further been poised to end a feud between M.I.A. and Diplo, who used to work together as well as date in the mid-2000s. This chemistry between the two even produced M.I.A.’s break-out single “Paper Planes,” which was then nominated for a Grammy.
In lieu of Diplo’s version, the rapper released another take on “Bird Song” this past Friday (Aug. 15), which was then labeled as the “Blaqstarr Remix.” She went on to explain on Periscope that it is in fact not a remix and is actually a different version of the song.
