By the time she was 11, M.I.A. had moved from Sri Lanka to India, and finally to a London housing project, her grasp of the English language limited to the words “elephant,” “mango,” and “Michael Jackson.” The late twenty-something also is an artist. Her work includes shooting a music video for Britpop band Elastica and her paintings — which have been swiped up by Jude Law — were nominated for the prestigious Alternative Turner Prize.

Now focusing on her music, M.I.A. takes on George W. and the censors, making people dance along the way. Her full-length album, Arular, was released in February on XL Recordings, and a series of self-released 12-inches have already been snatched up by DJs in the know.

I caught up with M.I.A. in a café off Portobello Road in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood to talk about her life, music, and the inevitable politics of it all.

You’ve been very busy lately. What have you been up to?

I don’t know. I can’t make sense of anything. I got in a taxi today, and the guy had to tell me what day it is. But I had to go to Puerto Rico to [help promote the] launch of the MTV world channel.

How did you get asked to do that?

I don’t know. They just asked, and so I did it. I did, “Pull Up the People,” and after the song finished, I just said in case you don’t know what I am — because that’s always the question I have to get … like “what the fuck are you?” — I was like, you’ve been watching my country every day on the news. That’s my country, that’s Sri Lanka, that’s where I come from, first generation one of them, and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that donated loads of money to the tsunami. And MTV gave like a million pounds or something. And they got up and cheered, but it seemed to go down in a really weird way.

You were surprised by the reaction?

Oh yeah, totally. I’ve had trouble all the way along. They’re like, “We want you to censor ‘Galang’” [her first single].

Who asked you to do that?

MTV. But then now they’ve asked me to censor another song, “Sunshowers.” MTV is asking me to write this statement. They’re like, “We’ll let lyrics like ‘That’s why they blow it up before they go’ slide if you give it a strong enough statement, so that we can give it to the public when they complain.” And my point is that the audience that is watching MTV has got the power in their thumb to zap through the channels and get it for themselves, and I just try to make the link between the politics and the music and tie the two together really.

So what is the song about?

The song is about when I was coming up and what I was watching on the telly and the news. The world was getting divided into two, good and evil, democracy and terrorism. And I got a telephone call from Sri Lanka and they’re like, “Your cousin disappeared, and we think he’s brain-dead. He joined the blah blah blah.” And that’s my average family scenario. Like, “Your dad disappeared again, this time we’re sure he’s dead.” Every year he’s dying in a new story in the newspaper. And then I was like, “Whatever is going on [in Sri Lanka] is going on there.” But here if I lived by the rules that are getting said in the media, I would fall under the evil category.

Why is that?

Because my family comes from that background, you know? I know people who have chosen to fight for a cause and dedicate their life to a cause, and it was done with so much good intention and with a necessity to protect and fight for independence. In the ‘70s, that would have been called freedom-fighting or revolution. Today that word is taken out of the dictionary. So anybody who stands against anything powerful — corporations, the government — is a straight-up terrorist.

So how did you first get involved with making music?

The girl who sings with me now, Cherry, she lived on this island. She [said], “Come out with me and Justine.”

Justine Frischmann of Elastica?

Yeah, she wanted some time off or whatever, and so we went [to the Caribbean]. It was amazing. ‘Cause when I was hanging out in West London — where I lived for three years — it was all indie, indie, indie. The whole of Britpop lives in this neighborhood. In the Caribbean wherever you go — there’s only 5,000 people on this little island — they had sound systems on the corner of every single street, and it comes on at six in the morning and stays on all night.

There’s only one club, the Chicken Shed, you dance in the street, and you dance in the pouring rain. That’s how real it was. People lived it. Everyone’s lingo and mannerism and dialect comes from dancehall. And we just got totally into it.

And then one day, the grannies came up to me, and said, “Maya, you’ve been out every night getting drunk with these boys. You’re going to get a reputation. You need to come out with us and we’ll teach you how to make spinach cakes, ‘cause you need to be a good girl.” So I was like, “OK, fine.” So basically, the grannies on the island took me to church, that was my first introduction to civilized, good-girl life. But when I went to church, I was so out of rhythm clapping to hallelujah that they stopped the service and they were like, “What happened to you and Jesus?” They held my hands and made me clap in front of the whole church. And they were like, “We know you got rhythm. You’re at the club every night, and we’ve seen you when we drove past, but why don’t you have any rhythm when it comes to clapping?”

I realized [it’s because] I was clapping mad Jamaican rhythms on top of the hymns and putting in the snares and bass drum and the high hats and everything. I was just doing something else. That was the nights I just decided to do music. I was like, “There’s something really wrong with me, and I’m going to figure it out.” Justine had a four-track and she went to the beach, so I took the four-track and made a song on it.

What inspires you musically?

It changes all the time. I still refer to some Tamil songs, because half the shit that Timbaland does is a piece of piss compared to Tamil people making it in India. It’s like what they’ve been doing for years and years and years, and Timbaland does it in the West and he’s a genius. I hear so many drum patterns and so many sounds that Timbaland uses that were just a really naff tune in India. It’s just really weird to hear how he interprets it. And it gets really confusing, because now I hear how they interpret how he interprets them and then back. When you can see that happening, there are no walls. Anything goes basically. Everyone’s just chasing each other’s tails. So it’s fine to throw it all in the mix.

Growing up in Sri Lanka, you lived for those days about six times a year when all the temples would get all decorated, and everybody would wear new clothes, and you’d get the best music. People drumming and pulling the gods around in the streets. Those were like my magical moments growing up. I guess it’s just spiritual. It’s not a head sound, it’s a gut sound. In Tamil music, in South Indian music, you get that. It’s like what Timbaland does, you get the head thing, but you always get the gut thing with the bass and the drums. It’s just instinctive.

On your last 12-inch, “Hombre,” you sing in Spanish. What made you decide to do that?

Actually, it’s Portuguese. I did it just to get a look. Because everyone was getting caught up with this Asian, blah blah blah, but I just wanted to get a nerve. I can be anything I want. Because nobody does it. We all get so bogged down with, “You don’t have a right to do that because you’re not from there” or whatever.

So you wanted to consciously play with that?

Well, I just don’t want to get boxed. I don’t want to be in the music industry and get dictated and have to compromise because I’ve never done that in my life, and why the fuck am I going to have to start doing that now? And if it’s about money, well, I don’t know. At the moment, I’m not hungry for it yet. Maybe one day when I’m dirt broke and I’m knitting baskets on the coasts of Sri Lanka, maybe I’ll be kicking myself, but right now I feel like I’ve come this far being fucked up and confused. I’m just going to go through with it.