Rapper M.I.A. tweets writer’s phone number
May 29th, 2010 by Bilal Ali
M.I.A. has no qualms about using Twitter to express her distaste, and this time she aimed and fired at NYT Magazine contributor Lynn Hirschberg.
The artist –- who made headlines in April with a violent video for “Born Free” –- doesn’t appear to care for the feature Hirschberg wrote about her for the publication. She tweeted the reporter’s phone number to her thousands of followers Thursday.
Her tweet read, “CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day [expletive] 
,” which of course caused Hirschberg’s phone to blow up with callers expecting to get in touch with the music artist.
M.I.A., a.k.a. Maya, doesn’t seem to think the piece was an accurate portrayal. An hour after tweeting Hirschberg’s number, M.I.A. released another: “NEWS IS AN OPINION! UNEDITED VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW WILL BE ON neetrecordings THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND!!! >>>>”
Hirschberg opens the article with the example of M.I.A. at the Grammy’s in 2009, nine months pregnant and spitting violent lyrics.
“Although her publicist had a wheelchair ready and a midwife on call, Maya, who has a deep and instinctive affinity for the provocative, knew that this Grammy moment was not to be missed,” Hirschberg wrote. “It had everything: artistic credibility, high drama, a massive audience. The baby would just have to wait. The combination of being nearly naked, hugely pregnant, singing incendiary lyrics and having the eyes of the world upon her was too much to resist.”
Instead of giving birth in a pool, embracing the pain and the struggle as M.I.A. once said she planned to do, she gave birth in a private room in Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, which was “one of many contradictions that seem to provide the narrative for Maya’s life and art,” Hirschberg wrote. “As usual, she wanted to transform her personal life into a political statement.”
Hirschberg said she has “no idea” what M.I.A. is referring to in that last tweet, as she told the New York Observer, but she isn’t surprised the artist released her phone number (nor does she plan on changing it).
“It’s a fairly unethical thing to do, but I don’t think it’s surprising,” Hirschberg said in the interview. “She’s a provocateur, and provocateurs want to be provocative.”