MIA has said that she became “confused creatively” after having a vision of Jesus Christ.
The 47-year-old singer, who released her new album MATA today (14 October) said that the vision was prompted by a “mantra” that someone performed on her.
The London-born artist was discussing the time period during the making of the new album in an interview with The Guardian, when she recalled the experience from 2015.
MIA remembered falling ill after shooting a music video in India for her single “Borders”, where someone had performed “some sort of mantra on her”.
“I didn’t think it was effective – and it turned out that it was effective,” the singer said.
MIA had felt like she was so unwell she might die: “I said: ‘OK, that’s fine, I’m happy that I lived and I’ve experienced and did my best.’ As I’d given in to dying, then I had the vision,” she recalled.
The experience apparently threw the singer into an identity crisis, having practised Hinduism prior to that moment.
“It’s not like I was into the deity in Hinduism that was about wealth – I was specifically into Matangi, a deity about creativity and arts,” MIA said on her relationship with the faith.
“Faced with having to cut that off and embrace the concept of Jesus Christ, I was having an existential crisis,” she said, adding that the album then became about “surrendering into the idea that the conflict is within myself”.
The “Paper Planes” singer also discussed her hatred for so-called cancel culture: “I think everyone should be having open conversations – we don’t all have to build effigies of people and burn them in the street for saying something, going after them like Guy Fawkes, because of fear of being seen as the other.”
The artist referenced her controversial tweet earlier in the week, in which she had compared celebrities promoting vaccines to far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
