M.I.A.

M. I. A. is a music artist, producer, and creative force, known for blending electronic, hip-hop, and world music. Hailing from London with Sri Lankan roots, she gained international recognition with her debut album Arular and breakthrough hits like “Galang” and “Paper Planes.” Her later albums, including Kala and Matangi, continued to explore themes of identity, globalization, and politics through bold production and visual art. Beyond music, M. I. A. has directed films, exhibited artwork, and remained an outspoken advocate for refugee and immigrant rights. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetra Grahamerton.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  I was on this island and I had not much of a direction, but I was gonna be a painter. And I studied at Saint Martin's and I was really into art and film, but not music really. But I was into music, but it was in...

• 0:40Rick Rubin?

  That was not going to be your path.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I was a hundred percent music fan.

• 0:45Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I knew all of my beats, all of my stuff, all of my artists. Like even before I was a teenager, I would trek like halfway across London to find the right church. And I was obsessed. And even in London, when I would hang out or bunk school and explore London, I would be drawn to meeting friends based on their music taste. Obviously, most teenagers are. But I would hear like people playing music out of their window and I would literally knock on their door and be like, "Hey, I wanna be your friend," you know? Like because there was no phones, cell phones, or there's no other way of finding people back then. So you would just walk down the street

• 1:30Speaker 01

  and if you knew that song is like a banging song...

• 1:35Rick Rubin?

  If they're listening to that,

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37Rick Rubin?

  That's someone I wanna talk to.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Exactly, and if you met people on the underground tubes and they were like wearing a t-shirt that said a certain song and you're like, "Okay, that's my best friend," you know? It was just like that. So I realized that all of my life, like everyone I had around was met through this musical thing. But I never wanted to be a musician. But my musical friend, who was in a band called Elastica, she wanted to go somewhere. And I had this painting exhibition and it did really well. And it was my first break and...

• 2:14Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the paintings.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  So I went to make a documentary film about the war in Sri Lanka. And then when I came back to make the film for Channel Four, I don't know, it just kind of fell through because the person who was sort of helping me commission it at Channel Four, he was the head of documentaries.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  And I felt like I got in the way of this serious subject. You know, so everyone would be like, why do you want to talk about this? Because this is so heavy, but you seem like not like that person, you know?

• 2:57Rick Rubin?

  But you're from there, no?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm from there. And but because I'd went to art school and I was kind of

• 3:05Speaker 01

  like, I was cool. And people felt documentarians are quite boring.

• 3:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  And serious people. And so he like asked me out on a date. And I felt really like, I don't know, disappointed or like let down by that. So I didn't want to carry on making this film. And so I thought I'd just stay at home and convert these stills into paintings. So that was my first thing to be reclusive. And to do something where you're just self-reliant, don't need money. It was the cheapest thing I could do, you know? And generated these paintings and and my friend was like, oh, you can show them in MySpace. Showed them.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Then things happened pretty quickly, got picked up for this alternate Turner Prize and people was like, yeah, we have a painter, you know? Like another person's arrived in the art scene. And I was like, yeah, all in, like this is what I'm gonna do. And then my singer friend was having some health issues and she was like, I need to take this time out. And since you're my best friend, you should come and be with me. And I was okay, but I was crying because I was like, wow, it took so long to get this break.

• 4:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  And you're asking me at the cusp of this thing. And it's gonna change everything because I've never been on holiday up to that point. And I was like, the last thing I wanna do is sit somewhere with you where nothing's going on. I would go mad. And I have to work off the momentum of the paintings doing well. And keep working on it. And she was like, no, you have to do this for me. And so I made a decision to go. And it turned out to be the best thing ever.

• 5:02Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that. Where did you go and what happened?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  We went to a little island called Beckway, and it's in Simpsons. And when we arrived, musically, it was amazing because everyone had sound systems everywhere in the street. And it played music all the time, like even when you're asleep at three in the morning, it's on. Six in the morning, it's on. It's just constant.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  And so I was just like sleeping to basslines, waking up to basslines. Everything had a bassline in the background.

• 5:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  You know, there was just not a quiet moment. And I thought, oh, this is not so bad because

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I know all of these songs, you know, because the Jamaican scene in London was huge. And so suddenly, I was like, oh, my God, this is like all the songs I grew up on. And to experience it in that environment was amazing. And I was out dancing in the street because like there was no clubs. They just had a shack in the street. And it was all hilly, so the parents can see everything that was happening. And so one of them came up to me and said, you know, we see you dancing every night in the street. Why don't you go to church on Sunday?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay. So I went. So I think we partied like Monday to Saturday. And then on Sunday, I went to church. And then when I was in church, I was clapping all crazy.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And they stopped the service and they came up and they said, you know, we've seen you dancing. Like all of a sudden your rhythm has disappeared for Jesus. Like what happened to you, you know? And I was like, you're right. That's, it's weird. I just can't do this.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And so that day, because this lady asked me that, I went home and I'm like, I'm gonna figure it out. Like, what is wrong with me just doing this normal clap? And I realized that I was just clapping out this entire new beat on top of the vocals.

• 7:09Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, that's really weird because when I'm dancing, it kind of comes out different in my body. But when I have to isolate it to just my hands and follow like some sort of beat, I just cannot do it.

• 7:23Rick Rubin?

  It's like you're playing a counter rhythm.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I was filling in all the blanks and stuff.

• 7:27Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And then that day, we wrote the galang beat. It was like really restraining yourself.

• 7:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And converting it into a machine that made some sort of pattern, you know, of the thing your body wanted to do.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  And then it all just like clicked. And then my friend came home and she listened to it and she was like, wow, you might be a songwriter, you know? She was like, I think you can do this.

• 7:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And really, I was like, I want to write stuff so you have a new record to make. And then I'm gonna go back to my painting like 10 days from now. I'm gonna write you an album and then I'm gonna go back to my painting and you're gonna do music and not get bored.

• 8:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  And that was really the deal. And as we started writing more and more, it started to emerge that it was actually its own thing. And then that was it. When I came back to London, I locked myself in the room, just stopped all of my socializing.

• 8:38Rick Rubin?

  Stopped painting as well?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Stopped painting, stopped everything. And for three months, I just sat in this room and learnt my voice.

• 8:48Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the process, how do you do that?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Well, it was just that I'd never heard my voice through a microphone. So I had this tape deck, a four-track, and this a hundred-pound mic. And it was just like making these sounds and going like, wow, that's my voice, that's crazy. You know, and then just becoming comfortable and then having fun with it. And then just letting that be the thing, so not trying to copy someone else, not trying to, not trying to put pressure to be good.

• 9:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  And great or anything, just really just speaking and then learning like how it sounded loud and how it sounded quiet, how it sounded when you whisper, how you... And just like being mind-blown by it and just like, whoa, you can make it do anything. And just kind of learning the voice as an instrument. And then the beat-making bit became secondary. And I was like, okay, so the documentary went into being the paintings, but maybe I can make those turn into songs.

• 9:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And so the paintings were of like a revolutionary vibes because it was content that was shocking.

• 10:08Rick Rubin?

  In all of the different modalities, the content was the same.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  It was the same.

• 10:13Rick Rubin?

  It was always telling the story about a revolutionary period.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  It was also revolutionary in that it was being made with no money and no rules. So like in terms of the industry, it was like, I just need to hear someone that tells me some information that I don't know. And I wasn't sometimes getting that in the songs.

• 10:42Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  But like, say, the nineties hip-hop gave you stuff, you know, like you were like, okay, I just like studied the whole thing when you hear a song. But we were in like two thousand and two, two thousand and three, where it was much more like manufactured pop music.

• 10:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  And you had like Simon Cowell like churning out bands and, you know, it was like that era of like everything being super shiny. But we were at war in Afghanistan, the Tamils were still at war, and you had like...

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Art is like Banksy that was coming from my neighborhood, who always wanted to like mess with the status quo. And so coming from the art scene, you had to be like that. As a musician, it was like, okay, if I'm not gonna be Banksy, then it just naturally became like the Banksy version of the music, you know? And it was about saying, okay, like, we don't have the certain luxuries to talk about certain things. Like, there are great things, and I'd like to talk about love and all this beautiful stuff, but right now I don't have the luxury to do that.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And it's something you have to work at, but you have to start where you start and, you know, report on like the social situation that you're in. Yeah, so I just like wrote

• 12:09Speaker 01

  things that were also quite personal. Because I I kind of knew also that you were gonna be criticized. And so it had to be really personal. And if it's coming from truth, no one can knock it. Like, no matter what anyone says.

• 12:29Rick Rubin?

  You're sharing your experience.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:32Rick Rubin?

  No one can comment on your diary being good or bad.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And also, if it's true.

• 12:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  You don't know any other way. It's better to never second guess like what other people are gonna like and do exactly what you feel in the purest form, because at least you know you were true to yourself in that moment. And you can evolve and you can change and you can revisit your ideas. In that moment, if it was coming from a true place, there's nothing to criticize. So I was already aware of that. So I always kept it very like, that's the most important thing.

• 13:09Rick Rubin?

  In the time that you were finding your voice, was it only the sound of the instrument or was it also the words?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  The words. It kind of just comes naturally.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I was kind of good at it because I I wanted to be a filmmaker, so I wrote quite a lot. But I always fell asleep with my four-track on one side and my notebook coming out the side. So like you wake up and you just write down what comes to you. If I thought about a beat and I fell asleep, it would just tell me what I need to say, kind of thing. And then you wake up and so I often worked out of my bed because

• 13:58Speaker 01

  that's just how far the

• 14:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  spear was.

• 14:02Rick Rubin?

  It's probably the closest place to your subconscious. You're tapping into that part of yourself that you reach through dreams.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yep, your bed is sort of like an altar as well. And you know, if a beat is good, you can't get it out of your head. So then when you go to sleep and it's in your head, you're naturally, your subconscious is working out the tune and the beat and what you would say. And, you know, and then you're like, if you fight that and you ignore it and you get up and you start doing other things. I feel like sometimes there's layers, you know, like you can still live with it. And then you'll walk by someone and they would say a word and then it would trigger it again. And you're like, oh, yeah, I gotta go and write that down. And at that time, I heard that Eminem, like he always had a notebook or something.

• 14:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And I remember thinking, I was like that, like I was writing on bus tickets. And when you have it, you got to write it down, you know? And that if you forget it, it might not come back. So I was always just like, write everywhere and it was just like all the time. That's everything I'm writing on it. So, yeah, the words were like coming, but it wasn't serious, you know?

• 15:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  It was just entertaining myself is what I thought.

• 15:22Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you were learning the language of music?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  I was definitely going, okay, as a filmmaker, everyone taught me to write these long things that last an hour. And then as a musician, you have to squish it into three minutes.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And so you're like, how do you tell a story in three minutes?

• 15:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  And so that was the only process where you're like, okay, you have to edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, and refine everything. And you have to refine it like you're talking to a ten-year-old. And it was kind of like a process that I was learning and I really enjoyed doing. But ten years into it, it became like a rut.

• 16:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  You know, like you could get stuck in that. And suddenly, it's very difficult to break out of that.

• 16:15Rick Rubin?

  What was the first thing that you put out into the world musically?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  So "Glang" was the first song we wrote. And the demo tape, I decided when we got back to London that it was still not me as an artist. That I was like, now I have to scout girls to sing this, like I'm gonna be Simon Cowell. So I scouted these three girls to be MIA.

• 16:40Rick Rubin?

  That's interesting.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yes, and our first recording of "Glang" was me demoing to them how the vocal should be, and then them replacing that vocal. So EMI at the time, they had Justine's band, Elastica. And so she managed to like wing me some studio time. It was like a hundred and fifty quid's worth. And that's how much I earned like per week when I worked in this shop. So I was like, okay, I can afford that. And we went and recorded "Glang". So first, there was a version with my vocal, and then there was a version with the girls singing.

• 17:20Rick Rubin?

  The professional singers.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  The professional singers, exactly. And then people started hearing my version and saying, oh, this is much more interesting. You should sing it. And so the original "Glang", which is the "Glang" that's on the album, is the original demo of me vocaling for the girls.

• 17:44Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  So it's not even with the intention like, this is me and I've arrived. It's like, it's something like this.

• 17:54Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  And you guys do the real thing. And that's the first song. And we put out five hundred white labels. And then it got picked up on Radio One as the record of the week. And I was working in a shop. And I was having to do like phone, radio interviews. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. And then, and then XL happened to be. So like my house was there, the shop I worked at was there. And XL was like the next.

• 18:23Rick Rubin?

  All three right in order.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like.

• 18:25Rick Rubin?

  Right there.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  A block there, a block there and a block there. So it really was quite effortless.

• 18:32Rick Rubin?

  But you didn't move there to be close to XL. It just was like that.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  It just happened to be there. The, the shop I was working at, there was a boy's shop across the street called Supra. And all the boys hung out there. And a friend of mine was working there and he said, oh, this guy came in and he says he's on this record label called XL. And he's interested in meeting you. And maybe you should go and find him. And I, and that's when I found the address and it is on the next block. So I just in my lunchtime walked over there and knocked on the door. And I was like, I think you're looking for me. And it's in the documentary where Nick Haggard's like, she came in and she said, oh, you're looking for me. And so I, I did, I was, I think you're looking for me because that's what I heard.

• 19:19Rick Rubin?

  That's what you heard. And then I played the line. Nick Haggard was the person you played it for?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yes, so Nick Haggard also signed Dizzy Rascal.

• 19:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and Adele.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  And Adele. And so he was famous because he'd signed Dizzy, you know, Adele hasn't happened yet. And so, yeah, Nick signed me and then the rest is history. Yeah.

• 19:44Rick Rubin?

  See if I have my phone, it'd be nice if we listened to that first song.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the beat is, um, you know, everyone involved, it's their first time making something like that. So Ross from the Fat Truckers, their music is not like that. But he was doing something new and Steve Mackey comes from Pulp and, you know, he makes indie music.

• 20:10Rick Rubin?

  You wanna play it?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  London callin', speed the slang now, boy say wah, one girl say wah, wah! London callin', speed the slang now, boy say wah, one girl say wah, wah! Slam! Galang, galang, gala, gala, gala, galang, galang, gala! Shock, go and get down, get down, get down, get down! Get it, get it, get it down, get down, get down! To lay you down! Dun, dun, duh, dun, duh, duh! Dunna, dunna, dunna, dunna, dunna, duh!

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Who the hell is hunting you in the BMW? How the hell you find you? One for a something, that's gonna get you! Put a strings on her, one paranoid you! Play the bass, who the hell is hunting you in the BMW? How the hell you find you? One for a something, that's gonna get you! Put a strings on her, one paranoid you! Play the bass, who the hell is hunting you? Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! London callin', speed the slang now, boy say wah, one girl say wah, wah!

• 21:32Speaker 02

  London callin', speed the slang now, boy say wah, one girl say wah, wah! Play the bass, if it's gonna run through, what's gonna save you? Paying you a little fee, something that can help you! Don't let it get to you, if it's gonna run you get you! That's how you, sell it up to sell you! Play the bass, if it's gonna run through, what's gonna save you? Paying you a little fee, something that can help you! Don't let it get to you, if it's gonna run you get you! That's how you, sell it up to sell you! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa! Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa! Play the bass, galanga, galanga, langa!

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Purple haze, galanga, galanga, langa!

• 23:39Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember how you made the beat?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's on the 505.

• 23:43Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Roland 505. So Peach has had that. So she's the one who introduced me and Justine to this machine. And Justine was playing the guitar and she'd never had a beat machine before. And so Peach would try to teach me it. And we made this beat. And like I said, I had the demo and then we were like, but we need somebody to take it off our machines. And so we paired up with Ross from Fat Truckers, who then added like the Moog bassline.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And yeah, the 505 bought all the other like bingy bongy sounds.

• 24:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  But at the time, like the dancehall scene was the most progressive in beat making at the time. And they were all so very like stripped down. And it was like, wow, like they're just like making beats from space. You know, like they just did not care. And I just loved that. So... But we were like, oh, one day we're gonna get to making these kind of beats.

• 24:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  We were doing like weird electronic kind of avant-garde stuff because we were just like, oh, girls messing around on this thing. You know, so it was kind of like a mashup of everything and people were like, wow, what is this thing? You know?

• 25:06Rick Rubin?

  This, I imagine this sounded really foreign compared to everything else that was playing at the time.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone's like, what is that?

• 25:14Rick Rubin?

  What is this?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And then also like your vocals, because it's so nonchalant.

• 25:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  And it was nonchalant because it was just a demo.

• 25:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  You know, and people thought, okay, that's her.

• 25:25Rick Rubin?

  You were demonstrating how it went, you weren't singing the song.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't. So they were like, what is this? Like, who is that? And then, a couple of months later, I heard there was this DJ called Diplo coming into town. And I heard one of his songs, his first demo. And I was like, oh, that guy gets it. I was like, he knows beats. And I was so like, you know, I was kind of like a beat junkie, like I really knew my stuff. And I like really hard beats, so I needed somebody who understood that.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And even though he was making like quite like trip hop kind of stuff,

• 26:09Speaker 01

  he also knew the dancehall stuff and the Brazilian stuff, like the variations in hip-hop. And that was the first time I took it to a club and was like, can you play this record? So I met him and I gave him some shouts in Glan. And then we made the Piracy Fund's Terrorism mixtape like a few months after that. So that all added to like the momentum, you know, that it was gonna stay weird, that there was something else happening, because it became like a movement. And for the first time, you would go to one of our club shows and you had kids from everywhere, like the indie kids and the punk kids and,

• 26:54Speaker 01

  you know, like you had the Clash reference in that Glan song, which is weird. Because in hindsight, I'm like, wow, that's mad because...

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I was into The Clash and The Clash were living in West London. So their presence was around. But The Clash come from the area in London where my family lived in the seventies. When me and my sister were born. So we come from Wandsworth and they also come from Wandsworth. And it's weird because my family story is The Clash. We were clashing the government for thirty five years or something.

• 27:28Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Well, so when I was born in Wandsworth, I think Clash did their first show.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  It was actually outside, like Sex Pistols and The Clash, they were all performing in Clapham Junction. And which is Wandsworth. And then my dad has got the craziest story. So he was not into politics at all. As a sixteen year old, he got a scholarship to Russia because he was the smartest kid in Sri Lanka. And they put him on the first commercial flight from Sri Lanka to Moscow. Which the Yuri Gigerin came from space, right? And decided that was his life mission to go around the world and preach world peace. And the first place he went to was Sri Lanka.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  And when he went there, he decided to launch a scientific program to industrialize Sri Lanka. So they set up a program where they're like, we're going to scout the smartest kids. And we're going to go and teach them science. And my dad got chosen. And when my dad passed the exam, he thought he's going to Paris. But it was a Russian university called Patrice. And he read it wrong. He was on a plane to Moscow, completely thinking he was going to France.

• 28:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  So he lands in the snow and yeah, with flip flops on. Has a massive cultural shock at sixteen.

• 29:02Rick Rubin?

  He was sixteen, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  He was sixteen.

• 29:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And he came from a mud hut. It's not even a town with a concrete house. He came from a farm. So he went there and he was a bit of a maths genius. And he was doing space design, okay? And machine design and all of that. And then his professor happened to be this guy who was quite clashy. And he supported a freedom fighter. And he got exiled by the Russian government. So he he got fired from the university. And he had to go and live like two hours out of Moscow. And my dad said, if I don't visit him every weekend, they're just gonna kill him.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Because that's what they do, they isolate you. And then once you have no friends, they'll just silently kill you. So my dad was like, I made it a point to go and visit my professor every weekend. And make him food and hang out with him. You know, the equivalent of what he did was if you put your name on a petition to free like Julian Assange. And the professor did something like that. The Russian government had imprisoned a guy who stood up for something. And he signed a petition saying he should be released, and that's why he lost his job.

• 30:24Rick Rubin?

  He called out an injustice and was prosecuted.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Up until this point, my dad's completely clear is he's just studying design.

• 30:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and he's a kid, he's sixteen.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  And so he starts going around to the professor's house. And the professor happened to be an expert in Tamil language.

• 30:43Rick Rubin?

  What are the odds?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  What are the odds? So he had this incredible library of all of the ancient Tamil texts. So my dad really studied Tamil through a Russian Jewish professor who was exiled. Every weekend, he started learning these books. And the context, like even like Bhavagita and like all the religious texts. You know, it's like really specific stuff.

• 31:12Rick Rubin?

  It's an incredible story.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 31:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And so that's how my dad got injected a tiny bit of nationalism, right? So he like studied this. And he was like, wow, this is actually a really old culture. And it's really like traditional and important and the language.

• 31:32Rick Rubin?

  In Sri Lanka, he didn't know the history.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  No, my grandpa was like a headmaster, but they were a Catholic family. So he never studied like religious Hindu texts. And he's never been introduced to that. The family had been Catholic for a long time. So my dad went and learnt like all of it kind of thing.

• 31:53Rick Rubin?

  How long was he in Russia for?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Uh, he was there for about four or five years. So yeah, he left when he was like twenty one, twenty two. So he was learning all this stuff and this is what happened. The professor started converting the Tamil liberal ideas, like Hindu texts into Russian and then selling these books. So they started making like loads of money and they would sell like five thousand copies every weekend. And the Russian kids in the sixties, they were like, oh my god, what is this shit? They'd never been introduced to anything liberal.

• 32:31Rick Rubin?

  The same thing was happening all over the world. These ancient texts in San Francisco, for example. It was the time for these old ideas to come back.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:42Rick Rubin?

  That's what happened in the sixties.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Something happened.

• 32:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, all over the world.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  All over the world, yeah. So what my dad was saying is that in the sixties, like Che Guevara would come to Moscow to do lectures. And my dad, you know, he would listen to everybody. But at the same time, the Russians always thought it's the Americans that are corrupting these kids with these liberal ideas. Like where is this coming from? So they started looking for who's doing this. They knew it was my dad's professor who had these books. And then the professor hired my dad.

• 33:17Rick Rubin?

  It's funny calling them liberal ideas because they're ancient ideas. They're not.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  They are.

• 33:21Rick Rubin?

  He wasn't teaching something new. He was teaching something old.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But they were considered, it was unwiring the fabric of like.

• 33:30Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  What was happening at the time. And they were like, we have to eradicate anyone who's bringing anything new.

• 33:36Rick Rubin?

  At that point in time, was religion illegal in Russia?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  I don't know, like the sixties going on to like sixty five to seventy, we're talking about specifically. It may be because my dad also went to Italy and he smuggled the Catholic Bible and stuff into Russia. And that was, he said he had to do it with those like spy movies where they have to take photos of.

• 34:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  He was, I had to take pictures of all six hundred pages, hide it in like, you know, stuff and smuggle it into Russia. And that was just like. A Catholic Bible, I didn't even think that that was, you know, but even you couldn't go.

• 34:20Rick Rubin?

  But again, it's ancient, it's ancient ideas, it's not, it wasn't these new crazy new ideas.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  It's mad because then my dad actually at the age of twenty one, smuggled the professor and the whole family because of all of this stuff. And it's to do with books and knowledge as well.

• 34:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  It's not like my dad was doing anything crazy.

• 34:43Rick Rubin?

  No, just preserving knowledge.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it was just so knowledge based.

• 34:47Rick Rubin?

  How did he get them out and where did he take them to?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Because my dad's Catholic, when he went to Italy to the place, you know, the cathedral and to the places to get the copies of the Bible, he knew a Sri Lankan nun who'd known him ages before.

• 35:06Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  And they provided like a temporary housing for his professor's family. So my dad kind of negotiated this at like twenty one. Then went back to Russia, smuggled them all out. And then he left them in the monastery with this woman being the point of contact where he was writing letters and making sure everyone was all right. And at the time, I found out my dad was actually in love with the professor's daughter. And that's why he was inspired to do all this crazy stuff he's doing. Cause I was like, that's a lot, you know, so he flew to London. And he's like, I'm gonna wait here until their visa gets approved to come to London. So he left them in Italy, came to London.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  At twenty one, he didn't know anyone in London, but he's working in London now in a factory. He's doing like night shifts to earn money to feed this family.

• 36:03Rick Rubin?

  Do you know how he chose to go to London?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  I guess it's because he like, it's an English speaking country. And he had this engineering degree. And it was like, oh yeah, you can get a job at an airplane factory and I guess. They had that manufacturing capabilities at the time and needed engineers and stuff. And he was going there. But he thought that they were gonna be there in a month or something. But he said it turned, you know, a month into two and then it just went on and on. And in the end, the British didn't give them the visa, but America did. And so that family left to America. And my dad was kind of like heartbroken and was stuck in London for no reason.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  And fast forward to Clapham Junction, outside the Clash and the Sex Pistols gig. He's in a pub and he's drowning his sorrows because the girlfriends left and said, see you later. And he was depressed and had no money to go back to Russia because he sent it all to this family all the time. And he was like sharing bedsit with some other Tamils he'd met, kind of thing. And in walks my uncle, which is my mom's brother. And he had a fashion business. And he was like, I'm looking for somebody to marry my sister.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  And my dad needed money and.

• 37:34Rick Rubin?

  He was looking for someone to marry his sister for what reason?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Uh, because my, my mom was on a student visa.

• 37:40Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And it was running out in a week's time. And he was like, I need somebody with a visa. And for some reason, my dad had a longer visa.

• 37:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, so if they got married, they'd be able to both stay?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my dad was like, I need the money. And my mom's like, I need the visa. And they got married like three days after.

• 38:01Rick Rubin?

  How long were they together for?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  They were together until the war kind of intensified and my dad had to leave, you know? So they had, me and my sister in London in that same situation. So this is what happened. He wasn't political, but when they moved into a bedsit together. On the day of the wedding, they accidentally moved into a house of a guy who was political. So he was like a Tamil guy who took them in. And he was like, hey, for two years, I've been trying to start a revolution. And every time I scout guys, they just keep running off.

• 38:41Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the purpose of the revolution. What was the situation going on in Sri Lanka?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  So at the time, they were needing to have a revolution.

• 38:51Rick Rubin?

  I don't know what that means, needing to have a revolution.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  So the British left Sri Lanka.

• 38:55Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  And they gave the independence back to Sri Lanka. But the whole time the British were there, they educated the Tamils as the middle classes. And they kept the Singhalees, which were the majority, as the working class. So the Tamil people, even though we were the minority, we had all the best jobs in the government. Okay, so they were the civil servant and they were...

• 39:19Rick Rubin?

  How long was the British rule?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  From the eighteen hundreds and...

• 39:24Rick Rubin?

  And everyone spoke English?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yes. That was kind of like our national, you know, and our schooling system was like Cambridge, Oxford.

• 39:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Standard. There was always visas and travel between Sri Lanka. It was a Commonwealth country, which is also why my dad had the visa. And there was a protest. And my dad's dad, my grandpa, went to this protest outside the parliament, and he got beat up. And they threw him in the canal to die. And my grandpa found

• 39:59Speaker 01

  a hole, you know, the pipe in the canal. And he swam through the pipe and he escaped. And he was in hospital, the dislocated shoulder, broken ribs and everything. And he wrote to my dad and he's like, you need to come back here because the situation is bad. You know, and that we need people getting involved to speak to the government, that this is not right. And the protests are getting violent, we don't know what to do. And so much.

• 40:28Rick Rubin?

  Explain more about what was going on. So the English leave.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  The English left and they gave the power back to the Singhalese. And the Singhalese overnight decided to become quite totalitarian.

• 40:40Rick Rubin?

  I see. And they were minorities as well, you were saying?

• 40:42Speaker 01

  No, they were the majority. So they were the seventy-five percent population, Tamils were twenty-five. And they said, oh, it's our turn to get our backs on a hundred year of you guys being protected by the British. So now we're gonna like annihilate you. And they kinda came in and said, we're gonna take away Tamil language as a national thing on street signs.

• 41:08Rick Rubin?

  Do you know if when the British left, if it was viewed as like freeing? Was that the perception? Was that now Sri Lanka is free?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I guess we're like the back garden of India, you know, and Gandhi was such a big thing.

• 41:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And he's like, we're free and India's free. And so Sri Lanka was just like, whoa, you know, but we're a tiny island. And actually, I think Sri Lanka enjoyed having the British there.

• 41:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  And.

• 41:38Rick Rubin?

  What you're describing, it sounds like life was better when Britain was there.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  It kinda was.

• 41:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Because when I hear my uncles talk about it, they would be like, oh, it was so much better in the sixties. And also like Sri Lanka was set to become like the Singapore, you know, of Southeast Asia. And we had so much going just before the war started. But the war starts in a very unpredictable way with a single thing. And so my dad, he really was kinda thrown into it. And.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  He had this knowledge that he'd learnt in Russia, you know. So he actually became super useful because he had more knowledge. And they always invited him to write up the manifesto and do this and do that. And so my dad, his first approach was to write a book. And it was called Lanka Rani, and Rani means queen and Lanka, you know, Sri Lanka. And it was a boat. And it was an exodus story of Tamils leaving Colombo in this exodus mission to go back to their homeland in the north. Because the government was like getting rid of all the Tamils from the south.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  So on this boat ride, you had all of these characters that represented all of the political ideologies of the time, discussing what the dream was, you know, what utopia looked like. And

• 43:18Rick Rubin?

  Did you say it was a philosophical book?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  I think so. But then it became accidentally, it became the manifesto for the revolution. Because so many other revolutionaries at the time used that book as a thing to identify.

• 43:33Rick Rubin?

  It was written metaphorically, it was written as a story. It wasn't written as, now go do this.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  No, it was a philosophical conversation.

• 43:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Same way, you know, Bhavagita is a conversation kind of thing. So like, it was just different ideologies talking. Because my dad also knew about the political situations around the world. So he could talk about what someone like Castro would do to what someone like the Russian government would do, you know. So he just put all of them in one boat and made them have a chat. And a lot of people drew from that and was like, okay, this is what we would do. And then from that emerged four groups that wanted to fight.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  And the groups were kind of like, it's almost like represented a social run. And the tigers represented the common, poor people. And they were big in numbers. And then my dad had the elite, you know, which was the intellectuals. And they were smaller in number, but then much more like knowledgeable. So then the next twenty years became a battle between these four against the government and then these four against each other. And that's the backdrop to the record. And I'd lived there for ten years until I was ten.

• 44:57Rick Rubin?

  During this time?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the war, when I was born, within six months, my dad decided to go and join the revolution. So I was six months old and we were on the farm. And there was loads of training and this and that.

• 45:19Rick Rubin?

  What do you remember about childhood?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Childhood was not easy because pretty soon, like my mom was like, what is this? I didn't sign up for this. She packed up and took the kids and left. And we lived in Jaffna Town. The farm was like in the middle of nowhere. So she moved us to a town and put us in with her family. And we kind of grew up, she had thirteen brothers and sisters. It was a whole town, you know? And so-

• 45:53Rick Rubin?

  So the whole town was your family?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  The whole town was my family. So that was fun.

• 45:59Rick Rubin?

  Living in that town, were you aware of the war going on around you or no?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we were outcasts, you know?

• 46:04Rick Rubin?

  What is the experience of being an outcast?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  So they always say, oh, these kids, you know, first of all, we didn't have a dad. And that was like an unheard of thing in the seventies in Sri Lanka, like. The only time you didn't have a dad is if he was dead. And then my mum raised us, thinking my dad was my uncle. So sometimes when we saw him, we'd only see him like Gonzi or something.

• 46:28Rick Rubin?

  Did you know he was your dad or no?

• 46:30Speaker 01

  No, we didn't know.

• 46:31Rick Rubin?

  Oh, I didn't know this. This is interesting.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:34Rick Rubin?

  Because it was dangerous if he was your dad?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the army would come to our village and arrest everyone. And then they would get us, because everyone knew we were the kids. We didn't know, but they knew. And they would single my mum out and the kids and, you know, they would put us on their lap and be like, oh, tell me what your daddy got you. And they were trick us. So my mum always was like, you don't have a dad. If if somebody says, where's your dad, you just point to the sky, you know? It was just so that we didn't answer the army by saying, oh, my dad bought us, you know, an ice cream or something.

• 47:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  But we would be like, what does dad mean? You know, because we genuinely didn't know. And also the village or the town would already be like, these kids don't have a dad. So we were like, oh, we just don't have him. We kind of didn't know where he was. So when they say, where is he? We'd say, we don't know. I think he's like in the sky, you know? And then, so, yeah, it's in the documentary. Where I do say to my dad when I do first see him, I go, we didn't know you were our dad. And I was like nineteen.

• 47:45Rick Rubin?

  When did you go to London?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  I was ten.

• 47:47Rick Rubin?

  How different was that experience?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was huge.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  But I was really into music in Sri Lanka.

• 47:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And I was artistic, even in school. And I remember during the war, I said to my mum, I wanted to learn singing. And the war got so bad during the time I asked, that the lady who did the singing lessons, she also like made bread.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  My mum was like, you can choose singing lessons or you could choose bread. Like, you get one choice. And right now, the family needs bread, which I need a singer, you know.

• 48:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  And so, I just never took up singing. But I was growing up and we had a television. So my fashion designer uncle from England, he bought the entire town one TV, okay? And so he put it in our house. So once a month, the entire neighborhood would gather, like a hundred people in our living room and everyone was squashed. And he bought one fridge for the whole neighborhood and we had one TV. And we would collect like a dollar each, each day. And when we got like thirty dollars or something together, the town would go and rent a VCR.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  You know, and then we would hire ten more movies and watch them. But when we watched them, we had to, because we only had it for twenty four hours, the VCR. We would hire ten movies and watch them all in one go.

• 49:27Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  So people in the street would make ice cubes in the freezer, because it was the first time they'd seen a freezer.

• 49:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  And we would use the ice cubes to put on our face to stay awake.

• 49:40Rick Rubin?

  Because it was hot or just?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  No, just to stay awake, so we can watch all of them, right, before we have to hand it in. So consuming entertainment was like this whole process, right? And it was.

• 49:53Rick Rubin?

  And your house was the local cinema.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  It was. And before the war, my grandpa actually owned a cinema. Yeah, my mum's dad. So the movie thing was a big deal, you know. And I would watch these movies and the only songs we had available was the movie songs. So there was no music industry in India. There's none whatsoever. There's none in Sri Lanka.

• 50:15Rick Rubin?

  Soundtrack songs.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is all you had to feed you for the whole year is whatever movie that came out. And so your input and the way you took it in and memorized it was so intense. Because that's the only chance you had.

• 50:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  You know, so I would be like so religiously locked in. And the impact these songs had on me was like huge because of that reason. It was like so scarce. And also, we didn't move around the city and go and hang out in a mall. There was no such thing. It was a war zone and people were getting shot all the time. So you didn't go out of the zone and people didn't enjoy themselves. Like you didn't have music on all the time or like did stuff. You didn't dress up because you didn't want to attract attention. And it was dangerous for the girls, dangerous for the boys, it was dangerous for everyone. So everyone just was like, tried to be muted.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  So when you like huddled together in this room to consume this stuff, it was just like transporting you into this other world. So yeah, I wanted to learn music and my mom was like, no. And, and you know, and that's also a sign of the times when your music teacher has to also make bread on the side.

• 51:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  A, to get money, but also just because the food became quite an issue. I think coming to England, it was the first time I'd sort of seen music again. And it was just like a crash course in like absorbing everything very quickly.

• 51:58Rick Rubin?

  Did you still feel that need to be muted? Or did you feel like now you could be free?

• 52:05Speaker 01

  It was totally different. Like when I came to England, we had to live in a shared accommodation with some other families. So it was like fifteen people in a house.

• 52:15Rick Rubin?

  All Sri Lankan?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like all the family members that were in danger and in the war zone. It sort of left. And my fashion designer uncle had saved all these people, but he was just like, now you gotta do your own thing, you know. So we were all living in this one house and it belonged to my little cousin, who was like learning how to play the guitar at the time. And we're like, what's that? And never seen a guitar before. And he was super white, you know, he was like born and bred in England. He didn't speak Tamil and he's playing the guitar. And his favorite thing were Beatles songs. And we're like, who is this kid?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And so everything we learned was through him and what he was into.

• 53:03Rick Rubin?

  He was your age as well?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  He was a couple of years older than me. But he found us fascinating, but we had no way to communicate because we didn't know English.

• 53:12Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  And he didn't know Tamil. So he would just sing Beatles songs to us. And and we were like learning English through his songs. So he had like ten records. I think when Whitney Houston's Saving All My Love came out, so that's when we arrived. So that was the opening to the soundtrack of My Life in London was that record. Then he had all the Beatles records. He had Simon and the Garfunkel and then Evita. So that's what I had.

• 53:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And I had to learn those really intensely and learn English through these records.

• 53:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, fantastic.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Then they put us in school after three, four months. So all of my vocabulary came from like Beatles songs. And one day we were in assembly and they asked a question. I didn't understand it, but everyone put their hands up, yeah. And it was like five hundred kids in a school hall. And I put mine up too, because I was like, I guess you're supposed to.

• 54:19Rick Rubin?

  This is what you're supposed to do.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And they picked me, right? And it was basically a talent contest for them to choose. It was like the Amnesty International Talent Contest. And then the winner was gonna like win something, I don't know. But they were like, yeah, come to the stage. And I was just like, oh, my God, like, this is not how it's supposed to go. And I understand it might even been like the first week of school. So it's like so daunting.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  And I got on stage and then they gave me a mic. And I was like ten, didn't know English. And then I couldn't think of a singer song. And I didn't know English, so I sang a beat. Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.

• 55:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  And not even in English, but just in syllables that I'd heard.

• 55:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And this is, I think, was like the craziest thing. It was very traumatic. But um, so then they gave me a T-shirt and I'd won an Amnesty International T-shirt. And that moment was kind of interesting because my choir teacher came out. Or music teacher and I hadn't met her at the school yet. And she came out and as I got off the stage and got this T-shirt. She just took me straight into choir lesson. So I didn't even sit in the rest of the assembly. And they took me straight into the choir room. With like thirty other kids doing choir. And then we'd come out of lessons and do choir lessons whenever she needed us, kind of thing.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  So she put me in the choir team. And that was kind of weird because I was like learning all these like Jesus songs. But it's because she obviously felt really sorry for me. And she was like, okay, this kid really wants to sing, but doesn't know English and stuff. It's weird thinking back, thinking, wow, the first school I went to, the first term, I was in a choir team. And so half of the lessons I didn't really do. And then my drama teacher came and because I was good at painting. She took me out of classes for the rest of the day to paint like drama sets and things. So between music and painting, that's kind of all I was doing, you know?

• 56:47Rick Rubin?

  Which is great. They were supporting your.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of weird.

• 56:50Rick Rubin?

  Your interest in the arts. You got lucky.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  I got lucky because I didn't have to speak a lot.

• 56:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  You know, so I was like painting sets. And then do my choir singing. And then again, I was like, oh, I wish I'd gone to singing lessons in Sri Lanka during the war. Or even knew how to sing in English. So I thought, yeah, I'm definitely a painter. That's like, that's what I am. You know, I'm definitely an artist, but not a musician. And I think from then on, that was my thing.

• 57:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Until Run DMC put out Tricky. So my school was turning ten years old. And then they needed a event to celebrate that. And they were like choosing people in each class to put together an event. And there was three girls that they chose, which was me and a Korean girl and a Pakistani girl. And they were like, you guys are gonna do like a dance routine. And we chose Tricky as our song.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  And so we did a little dance routine on this tenth anniversary. And we killed it. We won the first prize. And then we represented the school in the borough. And then we got to represent the borough in the whole of England. And they kept sending us around the country to do this dance routine. And it sort of changed my life because even though I didn't know how to speak English, it made me really famous overnight in the school. And then everyone was like, teach me this move, teach me that move. So we got to take this dance routine to like, I don't know, we had to go to Liverpool or somewhere and do this

• 58:47Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  huge contest. Yeah, we won like a week doing activities and all of this sort of stuff. And I remember thinking, well, dancing doesn't need English.

• 58:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  You just, you just need rhythm, you know? And like, that's cool. So it changed my like persona at school after that. And I became known as like the dancer girl.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  So that was always part of my personality. And then it just kind of like, as a teenager, that's also like, why I think that was really important to me. You know, like hip hop was so much about that.

• 59:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  And we'd stay up and record like everything and then after that, we switched it up to the Cookie Crew, which was like a local

• 59:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  girl rap group from Clapham. So we were like, let's represent.

• 59:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  But yeah, definitely Run DMC's tricky was like the catalyst to like, my like, presence at school. And that's what I was saying, like from that, then I started getting more into like harder hip hop. You know, like, we never did anything mainstream.

• 1:00:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  But it was kind of an interesting time because the late eighties was also the golden era of Jamaican dancehall music, you know? And then we had our own thing, which is like Jungle being born out of those two things coming together. So it was just like the best time in London for music as a teenager.

• 1:00:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  It was amazing.

• 1:00:26Rick Rubin?

  Was it more hanging out with your friends, listening to music, or were you going to clubs yet?

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  I I was starting to go to clubs.

• 1:00:33Rick Rubin?

  Mm hmm. And what was the club scene like?

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Well, the Jamaican scene was everywhere, kind of like transcended a space, you know, you could go to the park and that you'd have a sound system. And then you'd there'd be a warehouse or there's like, people would have them in pubs or clubs or, you know, house parties. It was kind of everywhere. The raves obviously happened in proper rave environments. And then with hip hop, yes, you could go to a club, but the club would go through the genres. So like every club you went to in London at the time, they would do like a thirty minute set, that was dancehall, thirty that's hip hop,

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  bit of R and B, you know, and then they'd close it off with a bit of soul and then everyone leaves the club. And it was like the same kind of template. It's kind of amazing to have your teenage years with so much, you know, music. But that is the thing, I think, coming from the war and everything. And also Tamil music is very beat and drum heavy.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  So it was just kind of like a natural progression to be like, oh yeah, the dance hall thing and hip hop connects with the rhythmic aspect of what you know.

• 1:01:57Rick Rubin?

  Was Tamil music folk music or pop music?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  So you know, like you have Hindi songs that were from Bollywood. And they were a lot more like dreamy and much more like the Hindustani ragas and stuff. It was much more about the singing and everything. But Tamil music in the South is very much to do with the rhythm. So we have that, you know, the counting, hitting the stick and doing Bharatanatyam dancing. So the Bharatanatyam, the original classic dancing. And and the music we have is called the Kannatik music. And it's all based on maths. And even our dancing is hitting your heel into the ground, making a beat.

• 1:02:50Rick Rubin?

  Can you play me a classic piece of Tamil music?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  So this is a movie that came out in nineteen eighty or something, right? That explains this music.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  Oh, Karanada, Nusandhana, Mau Gana Me, Shankara Bharamu.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Oh, Karanada, Nusandhana, Mau Gana Me, Shankara Bharamu. Shankara Bharamu.

• 1:04:03Rick Rubin?

  What is the lyrics about?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  It's more religious, but this is also in Telangu, which is a different dialect. So Tamil, but it's still in Tamil Nadu.

• 1:04:13Rick Rubin?

  Is most of the music religious or spiritual?

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  This one is a bit religious. Because this movie is about a guru. And it's about him trying to teach classical music. But the kids are disrespectful. And, um...

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Not disrespectful, but he's trying to pass on the knowledge. And so, and then he...

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  So, so this movie is about the teaching of the music.

• 1:04:52Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  So I loved this movie when it first came out because I was like, whoa, like, it gave me so much knowledge.

• 1:04:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Like someone learning how to sing and stuff. I would learn about music from this film.

• 1:05:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  So that's why this was a very important movie for me. But yeah, I just always noticed that there was a difference in the sound of like the toms. And the bass, like, kick drum and these kind of things in Tamil music as opposed to Hindi music. So I just knew that there was another drum. And so when I made Kala, that was my first trip back to India and to find what that is.

• 1:05:37Rick Rubin?

  Did you go back to Sri Lanka?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  I went back to Sri Lanka in two thousand and one, before nine eleven.

• 1:05:45Rick Rubin?

  And what was the feeling there compared to your childhood experience?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I just came out of art school. So when I went back, everyone's like, like, what's happening? And really, I.

• 1:05:59Rick Rubin?

  Had the place changed?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  First of all, I didn't get up to the north to where I came from. They wouldn't allow me, but I was kind of brave. So I was like, no, I'm gonna go, you know? But when I'd arrived, this crazy event had happened where this teacher was attacked in broad daylight at the roundabout in like Times Square equivalent in the capital by like all these army soldiers. And there was a massive riot and protest in the street for women's rights because all the army soldiers had got acquitted. So we were having the Rodney King equivalent

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  in Colombo at the time to do with this female teacher that had been raped in broad daylight. And I didn't know this, but we landed and my mom was like, you're not going out. You know, she locked the door and she locked me in in the house. So then I was there. She knew that it was gonna influence me quite a lot. And I was like, I need to go to this protest, like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, she really tried to control that. But I was like, I'm gonna do something about it, you know?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  And then I would find basically everyone in the street in all the neighbourhood and everything in the capital. They were all some sort of family that had been affected, you know? Like, everyone had a story. So I was like, wow, I don't even have to go all the way to the north. Even if I look on this street, there's enough people that are like, my son's in jail, my sister was killed, my husband's missing. My dr- every single door I knocked on.

• 1:07:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  And then I was like, wow, this is crazy. That's the documentary I tried to make, you know? But I wanted the shots. So I was like, I'm gonna go to the tiger territory. I'm gonna get into their camp and I'm gonna film like what they're doing. Because I was curious about what twenty something year old girl was like in the movement as opposed to the way I was living.

• 1:08:20Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  In art school.

• 1:08:21Rick Rubin?

  And it could have been your life.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my cousin, who was my age, he went missing. So that's where M I A comes from. So they wrote and said, he's been found. And then they're like, no, no, no, he's dead. And then they were like, no, no, he's found, but he's in a vegetative state and doesn't remember who he is. And there were so many mixed stories. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna make a documentary. It's called M I A. I'm gonna go to Sri Lanka, I'm gonna find him.

• 1:08:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna figure out everything else as well in the meantime, you know? And so when I got there, it was just so much bureaucracy. You know, like you had to have a visa to go down the street to buy a pint of milk. If you're a Tamil and you had to like get the thing and get that and get the stamp, report at the police station, have the police come and check your bag before you can leave. Like, it was all crazy stuff that you just could not live. And everybody was just so like muted. And I remember having an M and M C D. And I was in the war zone and I'm like, listen to this, you know, like it'll make you feel something.

• 1:09:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  And people like, no, no, no, don't put it on, don't put it on.

• 1:09:39Rick Rubin?

  Everybody's in fear.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yes, I took out like a nail polish and I was like, do you want this? And they were like, no, no, no, no, take it away from me because it will look like I'm making an effort and I'm attracting attention. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. And then I went to join the tigers. And I was like, I want to cross over like into the territory. And I think this is when, um, I don't know when Mary Colvin, she was a journalist, that went and she got shot in the eye. And I'm like, you know, I want to be a journalist, I want to, I need to go and interview them or film it or something. And they were just like, no, you can't go. And then just as I'm.

• 1:10:24Rick Rubin?

  Did you want to go to learn more? Tell me what you were thinking.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  I felt really guilty that I was having this life in England and all the girls that I'd gone to school with.

• 1:10:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Were experiencing a totally different fate.

• 1:10:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, so somehow you escaped.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Rick Rubin?

  You felt guilty that, why were you the one that got out? Is that right?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  It was a bit like, why was I the one to get out? But it was also like, I don't want to just forget that they're there. So I went back and I was like, what can I do? But everyone's just like, just don't do anything, just leave, you know, and be grateful.

• 1:11:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Also by going back, you were drawing attention to them, which they probably didn't want.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  So they were like, you're walking around here with a puma t-shirt on. And that was banned.

• 1:11:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  And then you had like some camo, like cool shit that you got from like, whatever, you know, Notting Hill Market.

• 1:11:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  And you have no idea how this impacts us, you know? And then that bit of dyed hair of yours, like, it looks like you're a Tamil tiger girl that's been in the jungle, in the sun. And their hair grows brown because they have no choice. They've been like in the jungle, in the sun, and they got brown hair. And you just come in here saying it's fashion because Kate Moss has got it. And you're just gonna get us killed, you know?

• 1:11:52Rick Rubin?

  That's interesting.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Rick Rubin?

  And you'd have no way of knowing that.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:11:56Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  So it's all stuff you're learning because you get stopped at the checkpoint and then just like, what's up with your brown hair? And you're like, what, like, have you not seen Vogue? You know? And they're just like. And so my mom was just like, you're a lightbulb liability. You're staying indoors and I'm locking the door and throwing away the key. You know, so I had to kind of like learn about everything. And then by the end, we were like, okay, let's go back to London. And they blew up the airport. The government parked the warplanes in the International Airport. And the tigers did the suicide mission and blew up all the warplanes. So the airport shut down and I couldn't leave.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  And so I was there for another month.

• 1:12:43Rick Rubin?

  That's unbelievable.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was kind of like, well, fair enough, because the news I'd got the whole time I was there was that the reason why I couldn't see my childhood house is because they were deploying these fighter planes and bombing the north at the time. So I got to know the fighter planes really well and know about them really well. Because I was learning about what was happening and why I couldn't go there.

• 1:13:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  You know, like I knew how many they bought, what year they were made, like how much it cost the government, like. You know, all of that. So when they blew it up, I was like, well, they did spend a long time saying, please don't do that, because you're bombing schools and hospitals and civilian areas and it's a no-fly zone. And they didn't listen. And this is like, cause and effect. In a war, you're as bad as the monster you're fighting. I understood that. The reason why the Tamil Tigers were called ruthless is because the government was ruthless. Your gauge and the range of ruthless you are, it's dependent on what you're fighting.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  And you can't call one side ruthless without knowing why they're like that. So then I was watching the news and on the BBC, they're like, oh, the Tigers have bombed civilian planes and here's all these like crying tourists running. And I was like, but that's just not true, because I was there.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  And it was like three in the morning and nobody was at the airport. And they were just like running these like weird clips, you know, and it's a propaganda thing. And I was like, wow, that's mad. You know, so my London friends would call me and be like, we saw this, we saw that. And I'll be like, but that didn't happen.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, just how I opened my eyes, that was my awakening moment to how the world runs.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, I can't join the Tigers.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Either I could be a journalist or, you know, I need to make this documentary

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  and figure out what to do. Because I feel really bad for all my cousins and people that are living like this. You know, this is their youth. And yeah, I came back and um, you know, and at that age, I knew that taking drugs wasn't an option, but that was the scene in London. You know, when I got into music, I was like, I don't have the luxury of all of that. You know, like,

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  you still have like a seriousness.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  And it's not for fun. It is like journalism.

• 1:15:32Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you're primarily an activist? And that it comes out through different forms of art?

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Not really, because I love music and all aspects of music.

• 1:15:44Rick Rubin?

  And you like making different kinds of music as well?

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:15:47Rick Rubin?

  It's not only documentary replacement music?

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  It's not, and I like the thing that music taps you into, yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  And that's so vast. But I felt like I had a role in that precise moment to do that.

• 1:16:10Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Because it wasn't a selfish drive. It's not like, I wanna be a musician. It was like, there's something urgent. This thing is working, and I'm not forcing it, you know? And I was kind of coming out of St. Martin's. I was creative and doing everything. But the music thing was my last on the list.

• 1:16:31Rick Rubin?

  How'd you get into St. Martin's?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  I just blagged it.

• 1:16:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me, how?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  So I started coming to L.A. a lot, because the music drew me here. So I was learning.

• 1:16:44Rick Rubin?

  Before St. Martin's?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  So before St. Martin's, I was doing GCSEs. And someone, is when they came up with that theory, if you listen to music, you can revise more? That was an invented theory in the 90s. And I was like, amazing. So I'd listen to like hip-hop or R&B while I was doing homework. And what I realized is that by the end of the exams, I was so versed on the songs and not really what was in the books.

• 1:17:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  And so the day my results came out, I just got on a plane. And I'm like, I wanna go and meet the people who made this thing, you know? I wanna go where they are. So I got a plane ticket to Los Angeles. My thing was that I'm gonna meet Snoop Dogg, you know.

• 1:17:37Rick Rubin?

  How old were you at the time?

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I must have been like seventeen.

• 1:17:41Rick Rubin?

  Do you have other friends who had come to Los Angeles your age?

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a cousin who was my age.

• 1:17:45Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  And she, she was already here. I hadn't seen her since the war in Sri Lanka, so she left and came to California and I left and went to London at the same time. And then we hadn't seen each other, so.

• 1:17:58Rick Rubin?

  When you came to California, did you see her?

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. She picked me up at the airport and then we were in all the clubs, meeting everyone.

• 1:18:07Rick Rubin?

  Good experience?

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I loved it. It was the best. We were out all the time. Met all the rappers. I got to see the Fugees at the time when they were like coming up.

• 1:18:22Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Met pretty much all the rappers. My twenty-first birthday party went to Nas' album launch. So I was coming here all the time. So every time when I came here, I'd miss my chance to go to the uni I wanted. Cause I would just miss the application process, you know, didn't care. So I went back and I had to go to a uni, otherwise my mom was gonna kill me. So I was standing at the bus stop one day and it was outside St. Martin's. And I'm like, I'm gonna go here. And I just.

• 1:19:02Rick Rubin?

  Was it a hard school to get into normally?

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the hardest.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  But I just made a decision, that's where I'm gonna go. And then I just called up the art department every day, exactly at the same time, like one thirty-seven. You know, and I was like, hey, I'm looking for the head of the art department and I found him and then just called him every day. And he's like, every time I try to bite into my sandwich, I get this annoying phone call, like, what are you doing? And I was just like, please, just give me a chance. I just need ten minutes to come and like convince you I need to study film at this school. It was the head of fine art and he was like, fine, like I'll give you ten minutes.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  And you can bring your work and bring your portfolio. And then, so the next day I walked in and I had nothing. Cause I didn't do the course that you're supposed to do before you get in.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  And I had terrible grades and I didn't have like work experience and stuff. And he kinda spat his sandwich out and he started laughing. He's like, are you joking? Do you know how many people like suffer to get into this course? Like, we have sixteen thousand applicants for twenty spaces and you could just waltz in here with nothing, right? And I was like, I just know.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  I'm gonna make the best movie out of all the other people you've let in.

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  I also can't comprehend that one human being has the power to say yes or no, to change the direction of a human being's life. And I was like, on paper, the person I am is I could either be a drug dealer or a prostitute or work at Tesco's or be on the dole and have loads of kids claiming benefit. This is my future. So I'm gonna get on that bus outside this college, go to King's Cross, which was like the notorious area for crackheads and prostitution. And I was like, I'm gonna go and do that.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  And if I become the craziest criminal or a hooker, get arrested and go to jail, my film is still gonna be a bad film. And then he was like, that's emotional blackmail, you know? And I was like, but it is true. Like, you have the power to change somebody's life right now. He was like, okay, just go home. And then when I went home, he called like twenty minutes later. And then he said, I had a chat with the art department and you're really lucky. One person dropped out.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Because they got sick and can't come anymore. And we're gonna give this place to you.

• 1:21:57Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  It was so weird. And I was just like, whoa. And then, you know, he.

• 1:22:05Rick Rubin?

  You willed it to happen.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  I did, and he said to me when he left, because after that he retired. He said, you know, we gave it to you because we decided that you got hook spa. And I had to go and look up what that meant. You know, there was no Google at the time. And basically, he said, you know, at the end of the day, everybody who came into this art school followed the rules to get in.

• 1:22:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  But that's not who we're looking for. We want people who don't care about the rules. And so we believe you that you might actually do something.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  And that's what he said.

• 1:22:40Rick Rubin?

  And how was the experience of school?

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was amazing. I loved it. It was just no rules, you know. It wasn't practical, so it's not like going to UCLA. It was very conceptual. So you'll sit there and talk about why Goddard or.

• 1:22:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  You know, like Derek Jarman filmed a blue screen.

• 1:22:58Rick Rubin?

  Real art education.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Yes. It was interesting. We learned about movements and artists and the concept of being an auteur, you know. And and like being strong about where you're coming from. And I was kind of into um technical stuff as well. Like, I wanted to learn those things, you know, material filmmaking and this and that. I wasn't I wasn't so into the surreal things. But I think I found certain artists who pushed boundaries because they believed in something and sticking to that was very useful then when I became a musician. You know, because if your idea is not strong,

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  you're just weak and you'll, you know, you you will fall for anything. So I think that those years at St. Martin's definitely strengthened. You know, like, don't come to the table unless you have a strong idea vibes.

• 1:23:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  And I knew that already. And it was the same for music. Like, I wouldn't enter the music territory if there was nothing new you're bringing to it.

• 1:24:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Like, it had to matter.

• 1:24:14Rick Rubin?

  Do you think of yourself as spiritual?

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Everything is coded in my life. I just have the revelation in certain moments when I guess God decides you're ready to have that information. But everything is already what it is. And I'm just connecting dots and going, oh, my God, oh, my God, like all the time. But everything is as is and it is. And it's quite bizarre, like even going through being a Christian now, right?

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't make me any less the thing I was. And suddenly I don't lose all that.

• 1:25:06Rick Rubin?

  Did you convert to Christianity?

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  I got baptized, yeah. I wouldn't call it a conversion, but I'd accepted being a Hindu before. But what I realized is that everything is always present, you know? It's not so cut and dry, like now you're in this phase. It's just a different way of understanding and a different way of existing. And right now, this makes the most sense in my life. And the Hindu phase was so chaotic, but I had the energy to deal with that and make sense of it. Also, like, it's just a bit of myself I'd never paid attention to.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Because, like I said, my father's family was Catholic and my mom's a Christian. And my grandma, her mom was a Christian, but I never just.

• 1:25:58Rick Rubin?

  Was there an event or a moment that brought you back into this?

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Yes, so I had a vision of Jesus Christ and.

• 1:26:10Rick Rubin?

  How long ago?

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  It was like 2017.

• 1:26:14Rick Rubin?

  Can you describe it?

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so I met you after that. And when I met you, I was still in that transitional period. So I would still say I was fifty fifty. And which is why the MATA record was called M A T A. And it was a fifty fifty record. And it was a journey where I was coming out of the chaos and trying to come to this other place. But I couldn't fully describe what that place was.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  But I had the vision and I knew it was real. So this is another thing about the music industry when people say or talk about how terrible the music industry is or what happened. I can't because for me, it was always a spiritual situation. But, you know, I always had this other bit where I was like, what is this? Of course, there's the political thing and there's the artistic thing. There's like the funny thing or there's like you messing with society and like making things happen. But there's always this like respect for some weird spiritual presence. That I was like, there's something, but didn't know what.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  And then, you know, I heard the saying, you're a citizen of the world and your religion is to do good. And I was like, that's a great slogan. That is what I am. I'm gonna live by that and that's gonna be my mantra. And so I didn't really think more about that. And then I made Kala under that spiritual idea that it's just like everything goes. Then I made the Maya album, which was much more about Islamophobia. And it was my connection to Islam, even though I'm not Muslim. I was like, they're going through something. Like, what is this, you know?

• 1:28:10Rick Rubin?

  You're related to their struggle.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Yes, I was like, you know, they need a voice. And even though they would reject me because I'm not a Muslim and I do everything wrong. Like I'm smoking weed or going out, I make club music and, you know, all of the stuff. But I sympathize and empathize with this group of people that's going through this thing. And that was the beginning where I was fighting for that thing so hard.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Even though I wasn't religious. And that was like the beginning where I started like feeling something weird, you know. And I started feeling like a presence of something. And I would start seeing things that I couldn't explain. But it was still kind of beautiful. And I was like, what is going on?

• 1:29:06Rick Rubin?

  Would you say it was channeling?

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  I don't know what it was, but my album was called Maya. And that's like

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  the post-war. So the Sri Lankan War came to an end the year I made that record. And I was extremely depressed. And I also made that in America. And I never knew about

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  the Christian side of life, or conspiracy theories, or the dark side. And I remember signing sleigh bells. And they came around to my house and they graffitied a pentagram on my studio wall. And my other artist at the time, he was like, you know what that means? And I'm like, no, I just thought it's like rebellion and anarchy or whatever. It's kind of close, you know? I didn't know what it was. And he's like, no, that's like a a symbol that represents like a portal, you know? And it's like spirits can come and go through this thing. And I was like, what is this, you know?

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  And so when I look back at the Maya album, it sounds kind of confusing because the human part of me was going through like loss and tragedy. And then also birth of my son, which was like the opposite.

• 1:30:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  And then the spiritual aspect, it's like you're still dealing with talking about a demographic of people. And just all people who might be like controlled or some sort of like something, but I didn't know what. And it was more like, I guess it's just why I was channeling in California, like people in California needed to talk about privacy, you know, and tech. Whereas it wasn't my thing. But that's just what I picked up on. And that's just what came out on the record. But Maya, on a spiritual level, means the same. It's illusion and it's about deception and breaking through the lies.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And all the artwork for it was tunnels. And I was just naturally describing it without really thinking about it. And all the artwork for all the songs was about going through this tunnel, going through this tunnel. And it's like, and then it dawned on me that Maya afterwards, it dawned on me that Maya's not my real name. And it was a fake name. And that I shouldn't have named that record Maya. Because it's not real. But then, that is what that was describing, something that's not real. So I was like, oh, maybe it's really great that everyone hated it. Because they're supposed to resist the Maya. And I was like, that's perfect. And then, you know, everyone's like, you need to get out of music, you're really shit.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Because this is a really terrible record. And I was like, yeah, but you don't understand the big picture.

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  It's actually perfect.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  You know, like how it made sense afterwards.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  I don't know any of this war going through it. But having come out, you're just like, whoa, that's actually pretty on point. And then, that, it's only once I accepted that. Because I was like, I have to self-therapy. So I can't traumatize everyone else just because I feel traumatized by the war coming to an end. That's not a good thing. But I can let go. And one of the ways I can let go is to remember that every Tamil who died is a Hindu. And is going to be born again, so it's fine. Just embrace Hinduism for them.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  And just pray that their souls and spirits don't come back to earth. Because they believe in reincarnation. That they don't come back and perpetuate the same trauma on the human race. And so I was like, oh, there must be a process that spirit goes through to clean itself.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Before it comes back, I think. So I was like, oh, I'm gonna just focus on that for a few months, you know? So I went to India and I was like, I think it's really fascinating that you would die. Then something has to happen where you lose that memory. Or you learn from what you've experienced, like where is this they go? And while I was there, we were doing like a photo shoot and some guy was like, what green do you want? You know, and we're like, it's the type of green. And I remember my mom always would say parrot green. So we went on Google and we put parrot green to give him a picture.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  And it popped up my real name, Matangi, who is the goddess of music. And we're like, oh, my God, you know? And her mantra was aim, which is M I A backwards. Yeah, and her mudra was middle finger. And I'd just been kicked out of America for the middle finger.

• 1:34:24Rick Rubin?

  Explained, kicked out of America?

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I went on the Super Bowl.

• 1:34:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  And like.

• 1:34:30Rick Rubin?

  The halftime show?

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yes, and then I got sued for the middle finger because I was like, we didn't give a shit like that. So the NFL was suing me for sixteen million and.

• 1:34:42Rick Rubin?

  They were suing you?

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:45Rick Rubin?

  This is a crazy story.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  So I was I was doing the show with Madonna. That's also a funny thing. She's called Madonna. And my real name, M A T H A, it means Madonna too. It's Mary.

• 1:35:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  But I didn't even think of that until this year. Like, that's what I mean. Sometimes things are just there.

• 1:35:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  But you just get shown things like when it's right, you know? Anyway, so I did this thing with Madonna and.

• 1:35:19Rick Rubin?

  So on the show, you did a hand gesture.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  I did a hand gesture and I didn't really compute how big the Super Bowl was. I'd never watched it before in my life.

• 1:35:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  And I'd never gone to an American football game or anything like that.

• 1:35:33Rick Rubin?

  Was it a preconceived thing or it just happened in the moment?

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  It's just kind of went with the lyrics.

• 1:35:38Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember what the lyrics were?

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  I don't give a shit.

• 1:35:41Rick Rubin?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Pretty punk.

• 1:35:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Didn't think anything of it.

• 1:35:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  And then it was just like, the most explosive thing.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, whoa, I did not see that coming. But then I found this deity that was called this and her mudra was a middle finger. And her mantra was M I A backwards.

• 1:36:06Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  And I was like, and and she was versed in sixty four arts, which is called Kala, and that's my mom's name.

• 1:36:13Rick Rubin?

  So it all makes sense after.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  It always makes sense after.

• 1:36:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  And you never know what you're gonna go through and then you go through it and then it tells you.

• 1:36:20Rick Rubin?

  Whatever happened with the NFL?

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  They dropped the case.

• 1:36:24Rick Rubin?

  Good.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Rick Rubin?

  I'm shocked that they sued you.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Because I said I will make a documentary about it.

• 1:36:32Rick Rubin?

  That's why they dropped it?

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36:33Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  So the documentary thing is still useful.

• 1:36:37Rick Rubin?

  So threats have worked out well for you, got you into school.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36:40Rick Rubin?

  It got them to drop a lawsuit against you.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm very scary, you know, obviously.

• 1:36:48Rick Rubin?

  What would you say you're afraid of in the world?

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think that after that, being really comfortable and just and then one day I had a vision of Jesus Christ.

• 1:36:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, and I found out that Matangi also was like the goddess of spoken word, which I thought was like rap music or something, you know, and poetry and but also truth. And me supporting WikiLeaks and freedom of press and saying connected to the Google, connected to the government, because it's true, even though I know it's detrimental to my career. I just had to say it because it was true. And like that, the vision of Jesus Christ, it was true, like I wasn't hallucinating.

• 1:37:35Rick Rubin?

  I think most artists are supportive of Julian Assange, no? Do you know any artists?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  They are now.

• 1:37:39Rick Rubin?

  I was gonna say, do you know any artists who are not?

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Well, in two ten, two eleven, it was kind of like still a bit taboo.

• 1:37:46Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  But, you know, I made a WikiLeaks mixtape in two thousand and ten. I was kind of very public with it, kind of thing. Anyway, so when I had the vision, even going back to someone like Julian Assange, she doesn't really believe in God or is very like logical person. To be like, I had a vision of Jesus Christ was very annoying, you know, and I I visit him in jail.

• 1:38:17Rick Rubin?

  Julian, not Jesus.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Julian, yeah. I had to be like, I saw Jesus. And he's like, it doesn't exist, you know?

• 1:38:24Rick Rubin?

  Well, you saw it, so obviously.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  I saw it, so I have to, even him, I had to.

• 1:38:28Rick Rubin?

  You have more information than he does.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  I understand. Like, I just know that everyone in my life is like, what are you talking about? You know, including my family. So I was like.

• 1:38:38Rick Rubin?

  Who are Christian?

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Rick Rubin?

  It's interesting.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I was like, yes. And they're like, why would it happen to you? You're a musician, like, you don't go to church. And but I don't know why it happened to me. Then I was like, you're right, like, why? And it is about speaking truth. And Jesus Christ is, um, that is what you can say about him is that he is about that. You know, he's about the truth. And there's no bells and whistles with it. It's not like Hinduism, it comes with like so much decoration or the Egyptian gods or, you know, Jesus is nothing.

• 1:39:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  And he's so boring in that sense, you know, like in a creative sense. But it's like, pretty amazing. And my journey in it has been, I listened to this pastor who clarifies a lot of things, you know, so it's not just the stories of the past, but explains like the world we're in right now. And it just makes sense. You know, he says that you can have heaven on earth. And a lot of people find this a very, very controversial statement. And I've already experienced all of the backlash around me for saying this.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  But his whole thing is, Jesus died so we can inherit what he intended for us. And that there was a race between Jesus and Satan to implement the will that they wanted for the human race. But only one of them died, which means that's the world that we inherited. So Satan has to come back to earth and convince everyone it didn't happen. And that we didn't inherit that. And that everything is terrible. And a lot of people get confused. And they stay in their trauma and we stay in the conflict and we stay. And I'm not saying that world doesn't have conflict.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  The world always has conflict and creation, destruction, and God has wrath and all of that. But at the same time, half of the trauma and despair, we can overcome it if we know

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  that we've already inherited the will of Jesus Christ, not the will of Satan. And that is that.

• 1:41:07Rick Rubin?

  That feels good.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  It feels great to know that. That means you can just have it. It's there, you know? And even understanding all the other spiritual things that I've been through already. It's like that whole Egyptian thing. The Egyptian religion is like really chaotic, but it's the same chaos as Hinduism. And you can see that that's why a monotheic Abrahamic religion came after all of these crazy ones. Because it's just like, seems like a natural progression. But it's like, just as like the timeline goes from one religion to the other.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  I just see that we're living in this. Like, yes, this was totally relevant 6,000 years ago. This was relevant 3,000 years ago. But around me right now, this is the one I'm tapping into and it makes sense.

• 1:42:07Rick Rubin?

  And all the streams lead to the same ocean. It's all essentially a version of the same thing.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  It's true. It's true.

• 1:42:19Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the principle behind clothing with metal in it.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Well, it's a combination. So it is a yoga principle. Because yogis would drink out of copper bottles. And it's kind of like, you know, just grounding the water and it's antibacterial and it's like, it just makes it more.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Neutral when you consume it. So when I was in India in two thousand and fifteen, somebody gave us a copper bottle and explained that. And I'd never heard of it before. And I was like, oh, that's really amazing. How do I fit stuff like this into my life?

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  And I was always been curious. And then one day I went to visit Julian Assange at the embassy, when he was in the embassy. And I met a guy who had this fabric and he was making wallets. So I remembered that.

• 1:43:18Rick Rubin?

  What were the wallets for?

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  It was to kind of get you off grid.

• 1:43:23Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  So he was a journalist, I think. And he was going to Afghanistan or something. And he was like, oh, journalists would really need this.

• 1:43:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  So that was my introduction to nickel. And then a friend of mine called Adam Harvey, he did an art piece where he made a burka made out of this fabric. And it was in the New York Museum. And I bought it. And I was like, oh, this is really brilliant.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  And then he, I don't know what happened to him. He didn't really do anything with it. And that that was like ages ago, like eight, nine years ago or something. But I think the fabric was so expensive back then. It was such a novelty. His whole thing was about stealth mode and anti-drone wear. And so that was another thing. And so I'd always been interested in fabric with function is kind of amazing, but it's just not affordable. And people always said, oh, why don't you have a brand? And I was like, but I would need a brand that's like doing something.

• 1:44:29Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  You know, like why add to pollution? Unless there's a purpose.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  And then, when I was away, I realised my son is also getting older. He's a teenager, he's always on the gadget. And, you know, I'm not gonna get him away from California and make him live in a cave. It's not gonna happen, I've lost that war. You know, he's at school here in America. He uses the phone to order food, convenience, Ubers. He goes to the classroom, they use laptops now, not a, you know, a slate like when I was at school. So, I was like, how do I get around this? So, it was just like a combination of all these things. I was like, I want him to wear tracksuit bottoms

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  where he could put a laptop on his lap and I'm still gonna have grandchildren.

• 1:45:26Rick Rubin?

  So, the clothing protects you from radiation, EMF, many man-made, negative impacting energies?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we're not gonna undo it. And the tech world is saying, it's fine. We can have that capacity to consume all of these extra frequencies, right? Because they're saying, we're already electrical beings.

• 1:45:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  And I get that. So, when Elon Musk says, you don't have to worry about EMF, but at the same time, it's the scale of it.

• 1:45:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  So, I went to India last year and a friend of mine was like, you should have a brand, you know? And she expected like crazy H and M, Topshop, kind of like accessible, Indians can buy it brand. And I tried for a month to go around and look at factories and it just didn't gel. Everything was difficult. And then, I got to Indonesia and my cousin came and she said, oh, you know, six years ago, you came and gave me a parcel to put in the garage. And she's like, I'm moving out, so here's your package. And so, six years ago, apparently, I went and left this parcel and I opened it up, it was this fabric.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  And I'd ordered it from China and just left it in a garage and forgot about it. And I was like, oh, that's the past me, leaving something for the future me. Sometimes that happens. Where I don't even remember.

• 1:47:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  And so that was it.

• 1:47:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and it came right at the right time.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  Right at the right time, I took that fabric, just made something happen and it just kind of like, everything clicked into place.

• 1:47:13Rick Rubin?

  So how long ago did you start the brand?

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  We launched last June. But you know, this is also like, it goes hand in hand with my spiritual experience because I was doing this in-between thing, you know, of like, how do I be this new me without losing the old me, you know, or am I supposed to, I don't know.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  It's like, does Jesus save you because you were already doing the right thing? Or did he save you to make you not do that anymore and do a different thing? Like, how confusing. And so then I found this pastor and he was like, yeah, you're gonna do this thing in 90 days, this business. And everything's gonna like, you know, click into place. And, I don't know, the words were so powerful. I just like, yeah, that just makes the most amount of sense, you know. And before that, I was listening to a lot of podcasts and having like, a social understanding of everything and

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  really kind of becoming overwhelmed with what was happening after COVID and everything. And thinking like, what do you do to help people? And then he's like, it will reveal itself and it's gonna happen and it's gonna happen in 90 days. And then I was like, okay, all I have to do is just give it a chance, you know? And then with 90 days, we designed the logo, made the clothes, dyed the thing, made the website, launched the brand. In 90 days.

• 1:48:52Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty like supernatural.

• 1:48:55Rick Rubin?

  The only place the clothes can be bought now are on the website?

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  At the moment, yes. But obviously, we're gonna go into like, phase two, like trying to get it out.

• 1:49:03Rick Rubin?

  It's brand new.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a baby.

• 1:49:05Rick Rubin?

  How many different pieces do you make?

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  At the moment, we have about 35.

• 1:49:10Rick Rubin?

  That's a lot.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  To 40 things. And people love it.

• 1:49:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  You know, a lot of people want kids' codes.

• 1:49:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. It's completely different than what anyone else is doing.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  It's so different. It's also very new. So people are like, what is this? Like, we don't even need this. And.

• 1:49:27Rick Rubin?

  Even if people don't care about the function of it, it feels very forward. It feels science fiction.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  It is. It's moving the dial on fashion. It's very difficult to express this in such a short time because we are a small time scale. But the function is not even just singular function. It does have anti-tech, anti-surveillance function, that all our bags get you off-grid.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  And then it has this other antibacterial blah blah blah. And protects you against EMS and protects unborn fetuses and stops all the rest of it. While we are in the most exponential growth tech period of our time.

• 1:50:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  In human history, you know, where even in this government where they're saying, hey, five hundred billion is gonna go into AI and the tech industry. Not the climate industry, not healthcare, not education, into tech. So imagine how much more we are gonna be relying on that, you know, because everyone has to make that five hundred billion back.

• 1:50:44Rick Rubin?

  Interestingly, it's high-tech clothing.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Totally. It's understanding where we are.

• 1:50:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  What time we're in and going, okay, we're gonna provide a solution. It's not a battle, even though like you make armor and when you put armor on, you go into battle. But the battle here is information, is to bring people knowledge, you know, because people die from lack of knowledge and lack of information. And if tech invades our life to bring us information, and that's the whole thing, it's like, this is about information. And we're living in information age, then it's important that people are informed about the ways to protect their bodies.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  And choosing when I'll to be in this, you know.

• 1:51:40Rick Rubin?

  Do you wear the clothing every day?

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  I do, actually, yeah.

• 1:51:44Rick Rubin?

  And how's the experience been since you've been wearing it?

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Like, when I sleep in it, it's amazing.

• 1:51:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  You know, like, I think something must be happening. And also to test the clothes, I moved into a smart home. Like, I'm very anti-smart homes.

• 1:51:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  But the place I've rented, everything is so technological. And so I, when I wear it in bed, especially now we're in L.A. after the fires, they're gonna be building smart homes and smart cities. To me, it's like, you know, it's the second skin to be in an environment like that. Like, I need it, you know?

• 1:52:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, we also don't know with any new technology. We don't know the long-term effects. At one point in time, asbestos was this new scientific discovery that was cheap insulation, that was gonna keep the world warm, and turned out to be not so healthy.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we have technology like all around us. Like, it's in our pocket. Then it's in the sky with the satellite. And I don't, I don't even think like this is evil. I don't even think like that. You know, I think everything has a balance, you know? And so I do think that some of the technology reveals God and brings us closer and has a positive impact. But I do think there's people that will abuse it, you know? And that we've seen that, we're living in that time where you're seeing this. And it's like, you can't really live in ignorance and pretend it's not happening.

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  And I don't know, sometimes I like wearing other clothes, but, and colors. But it's not like Omni can't occupy that space either, so.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Pretty revolutionary for keeping humanity going. Yes. You know, like, that's the aim here, is that as much as people believe that this is the end of the world and we're in a dire situation, I think it's possible to have heaven on earth and that humanity can survive.

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