M.I.A. Album in Limbo

The much-anticipated debut album from Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A., Arular, slated to hit stores on February 22nd, has been delayed until at least mid-March. The record has been riding a wave of positive pre-release press, including a four-star review in the current issue of Rolling Stone dubbing it "one of the new year's most remarkable albums."

According to a spokesperson for record label Beggar's Banquet, legal issues over a sample used on the record are postponing the release.

The twenty-eight-year-old Londoner, born Maya Arulpragasam, spent the first nine years of her life in the jungles of Sri Lanka in the midst of a violent civil war, before emigrating to the U.K. in 1986 with her mother and siblings. "The two years before I came to England were a mess," M.I.A. told Rolling Stone last month. "My school got burned down. Loads of people I knew were killed." (In December, Sri Lanka was devastated by the Asian tsunami.)

Having lived through so much, M.I.A. was undaunted by her prospects in music. "How I sing is like how a tone-deaf person would sing," she continued. "But I was like, 'I'm just gonna keep writing songs.' I had to understand that it's all about just being brave with who you are . . . I like taking people on. I'm a third-world refugee terrorist or whatever."

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

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