M.I.A. Says GaGa Aint Sh!t & If You Gone Sell Out Do It Right!

M.I.A’s new interview with NME Magazine via Oh No They Didn’t and Necole B!tchie:

Do we still need record labels?

Are they even interested in making money from music anymore? Lady Gaga plugs 15 things in her new video. Dude, she even plugs a burger! That’s probably how they’re making money right now – buying up the burger joint, putting the burger in a music video and making loads of burger money.

Do you think those programmes and the internet have destroyed the mythology around popstars?

I don’t know. Again, there’d Lady Gaga – people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I f*cking do! That’s a talent and she’s got a great team behind her, but she’s the industry last’s stab at making itself important – saying, ‘You need our money behind you, the endorsements, the stadiums’ Respect to her, she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work, but my belief is: Do It Yourself.

How important are image and visuals to your music?

Very. But it’s not like “Haus of Gaga” (laughs). Me blindfolded with naked men feeding me apples and sh*t.

Is it still possible for a musician to ‘sell-out’ in 2010?

Everybody gets turned into a product push so fast – these weird fucking ‘hipster’ parties promoting Red Bull or whatever. There’s a difference between saying ‘no’ to everything and ‘yes’ to everything. I’m not f*cking Coldplay because I said ‘no’ to certain things. When I did my ‘selling-out’ show for MTV they made me a hundred grand and I built a school with it in Africa.