M.I.A: "Diplo Shat On Every Good Thing That Was Happening To Me"

Veteran UK rapper M.I.A. has taken the opportunity to open up about her relationship with former collaborator and romantic partner Diplo, in a Rolling Stone retrospective on her debut album Arular, which turned 10 years old on 22 March.

In looking back at her experiences in the lead-up to Arular's release, M.I.A. paints Diplo as somewhat emotionally volatile, opposed to press attention and ostensibly more concerned with not being seen as 'corny' than pursuing or embracing mainstream success — personality traits that she says he tried to force upon her at the time of their involvement.

"By the time I hit America and actually found out the press aspect of it and the success aspect of it and the fact that there's gonna be, you know, tons of people at the shows … by the time that was happening to me, I was with Diplo and he basically just, like, shat on every good thing that was happening to me," she told Rolling Stone.

"And I just didn't enjoy it, because if I was on a cover of a magazine, he'll be like, 'What do you want to do, like, be on the dentist waiting room table? Like, is that what a magazine is for? It's corny. Like, don't do magazines.'"

M.I.A. also says that occasionally Diplo's reactions would turn physical, such as when he destroyed the furniture in her hotel room for the transgression of having signed with major label Interscope.

"When I got signed by Interscope, he literally smashed my hotel room and broke all the furniture because he was so angry I got picked up by a major label and it was the corniest thing in the world that could possibly happen," she continued. "And then Missy Elliott called me for the first time in 2005 to work with me on her record, and I'm sure we had a massive fight about that — the fact that I was talking to anyone who was, like, popular.

"I wish I'd enjoyed it, because I had this person on my shoulder the whole time saying, 'It's shit, it's shit, it's shit. You shouldn't be on the charts. You shouldn't be in the magazines and you should not be going to interviews. You should not be doing collaborations with famous people. You should be an underground artist."

Looking back, M.I.A. explains that, for the two-year period the pair were close, she willingly went along with Diplo's temperamental nature because she believed in his experience.

"I just let him dictate," she said. "I basically had this man dictate to me how everything in America that I experienced was completely, like, irrelevant and it was nothing."

"But at that time I believed him," she continued. "I just felt like he was right, and he was something of a political, righteous person with some values. I didn't realise it was just jealousy. That, actually, the life that I had and the story that I told through my music and the connections I had with people in the music industry and the connections that I made in the streets of London or around the planet and me being the way I am and my personality — that is what made me make that record.

"It was really stupid for me to put all that hard work in and evolve as a human being for 25 years and then on the 27th year meet this guy and just give him the batch of controlling it. I think that's what happens to women, you know: You fall in love, and shit happens."