Never one to shy away from political controversy, M.I.A. recently took it upon herself to post a twitter update about her thoughts on the recent riots in London:
“I’m going down to the riots to hand out tea and mars bars” (thanks Gigwise.com )
I wish I could give you a screenshot of this, but after some criticism and charges of insensitivity, she wisely removed her tweet.
Also in London riot news, the Sony/PIAS warehouse, where thousands and thousands of physical music merchandise (cd’s, records, maybe even tapes) are stored until they are ready to be shipped to music stores, has unfortunately burned down. This means the loss of physical merchandise for many independent music labels. The list is too long to post here, but among the labels effected are Beggars/XL. M.I.A. herself is affiliated with this label, among others (like Interscope, which seems not to have been effected). (thanks brooklynvegan.com, who also mention the M.I.A. tweet )
The world of record labels is confusing. You’ve got your Majors and your Indie labels, and everything in between. You’ve got labels that are 51% independently owned and 49% owned by a major. You’ve got indie labels that have been sold to or have made distribution deals with majors, only to go back to being completely indie. You’ve got labels that have been bought (in part or completely) by other labels, but still retain their name. My point here is that since the label landscape is so cluttered, and since I have not been able to find anything online yet to confirm this, I am not 100% sure that any of M.I.A.’s albums were stored in that warehouse. But being under the Beggars/XL label, I think it is safe to assume that they were stored there, and burned down with everything else in the warehouse.
What we can conclude from all of this is that it looks pretty likely that M.I.A. gave her support (via twitter) to the rioters that actually ended up burning M.I.A. records.
And that, if it turns out to be true, is pretty darn ironic.
