M.I.A. Blasts Lady Gaga: "She's a Good Mimic"

Trendsetting rapper M.I.A. has fired the first shots in a potential war of words with trendsetting pop star Lady Gaga. In an interview in the upcoming issue of NME, M.I.A. dissed Gaga's music, style and the obscene amount of product placement in the "Telephone" video. "Lady Gaga — people say we're similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is," M.I.A. told NME (via NYMag's Vulture).

Dueling fashion icons! Check out Lady Gaga's craziest outfits and M.I.A.'s wildest looks.

The Kala rapper didn't stop there. "She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know?," M.I.A. continued. "She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do!" M.I.A. went on to poke fun at the creative Haus of Gaga working behind the singer, likening it to "Me blindfolded with naked men feeding me apples and shit."

Incidentally, M.I.A. and Lady Gaga are labelmates on Interscope, so it'll be interesting to see how the record company reacts to his family feud. Still, if the great Kanye vs. 50 Cent battle of 2007 taught us anything, it's that a little innocent beefing never hurt album sales, and M.I.A. has a new LP on the way in June. At press time Lady Gaga has not responded to M.I.A.'s quotes, nor has M.I.A. used her Twitter account to embellish on her unprovoked statements.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

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