Last night, before M.I.A.’s set at NYC’s Terminal 5, Julian Assange Skyped into the venue from his current home in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. M.I.A. has had a long mutual admiration with the WikiLeaks founder, taking inspiration from him on her Vicki Leekx mixtape in 2010 and writing the theme to his The World Tom...

We’ve heard significant chunk of M.I.A.’s oft-delayed, “too positive” Matangi, but now it is available to stream in full before its release next Tuesday. On top of “Bad Girls,” “Y.A.L.A.,” “Bring The Noize,” “Come Walk With Me,&#8221...

For a second there, it looked like the YouTube Music Awards could be some kind of game-changer: Creative direction from Spike Jonze, performances from Arcade Fire and M.I.A. and Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, The Creator, the entire idea of an A-list awards show that exists entirely on the internet. This could’ve flipped the entire awards-...

A few weeks ago, we learned that the first-ever YouTube Music Awards show would go down in New York this fall, with Jason Schwartzman as host and Spike Jonze as creative director. The three performers announced were all total heavyweights: Arcade Fire, Eminem, and Lady Gaga. And now we have some more names to add [...]

At this point, it’s only a few weeks before we get to hear Matangi, the fourth album from M.I.A. One of its tracks is “Y.A.L.A.,” a sputtering and fizzing rave attack that takes the piss out of the entire YOLO thing, and she’s already shared a preview of it. But now, the entire track is [...]