Mia22

It's been three years since M.I.A.'s last album, but the singer-rapper has kept the pop world on its toes since then. She followed 2010's divisive Maya with a mixtape, Vicki Leekx, dropped on the resolutely unorthodox release date of New Year's Eve. A little over a year later, she turned a walk-on role in Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show into a major one by flipping off cameras in front of the year's biggest TV viewing audience. In the media and in the studio, she has continued to wrap her words and actions in the language of protest. It's a trait she may have inherited from her father, a one-time revolutionary in her home country of Sri Lanka, where Tamils — the ethnic minority to which her family belongs — clashed with the government for decades. M.I.A.'s fourth album, Matangi, is out today. The title, she explains, derives from her birth name, Mathangi Arulpragasam. "It's what's on the passport but I haven't used it since I was very young," she says. "When I came to England, people had a hard time pronouncing it at school. So my auntie told me to call myself Maya, after her Yugoslavian skiing instructor." What M.I.A. didn't know about her real name until recently is that she shares it with a Hindu goddess — and, as she tells NPR's David Greene, it's one with whom she's grown to feel a particular kinship. Greene recently spoke with M.I.A. about talking her way into art school, collaborating on Matangi with Julian Assange and why a raised middle finger isn't necessarily obscene to her. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.