Watch The Controversial New M.I.A Video That Almost Disappeared

M.I.A.

It's been a roller-coaster of a day for incendiary British rapper M.I.A, who today released the controversial video for her new single Double Bubble Trouble on YouTube – or tried to – only to have it blocked globally within minutes of its posting.

Although the video has since been restored to M.I.A's official YouTube page, speculation has run rampant over the reasons for the initial removal, with the (admittedly unofficial) consensus online being the assumption that the video was blocked due to its uncensored depiction of 3D-printed weapons and (possibly) simulated drug use.

Fans around the world scrambled to inform the star about the block on Twitter, where after some time M.I.A tweeted regarding the hold-up, though she remained vague about the exact cause, indicating that new label Universal Music was to some degree involved in her frustration.

This isn't the first such censorship incident M.I.A has had to contend with – the famously provocative artist had her video for her 2010 track Born Free – in which red-heads are used as an allegory for actually oppressed people and slaughtered arbitrarily – pulled from the online streaming platform for its graphic violence levels.

Meanwhile, the upset comes a week or so after M.I.A appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers for an outlandish performance of the single replete with actual drones and that crazy-ass dance style popularised by people with scarily unnatural body control, which has only served to further bolster the infamy of the song - a loose reworking of Shampoo's 1994 bubblegum hit Trouble - in the lead-up to the release fiasco this morning.

Have a watch of the polarising clip below and judge for yourself whether there's anything in there that's worth the kind of censorship hammer that was brought down upon M.I.A this morning.