M.I.A. is known for doing things her way (case in point: flipping the bird to the millions of people watching the 2012 Super Bowl), so it's not all that surprising that she claims she's willing to leak her own album if her record label doesn't put it out in a timely fashion.
"Matangi," the album in question, has been delayed for quite some time now, developments M.I.A. blamed on the album's "positive" sound.
The Huffington Post has reached out to Interscope for comment and will update this article if word is received. In January, M.I.A. said that she thought the album was good to go. "I thought I'd finished it. I finished it and then I handed the record in, like a couple of months ago," she said. "At the moment, I've been told it's too positive. So we're having a bit of an issue at the label. They're like 'You need to like darken it up a bit'. I don't know what it is but as soon as I work that out... I'm taking my time to decide what they mean. It's an interesting one for me. It's like, 'We just built you up as the public enemy No. 1 and now you're coming out with all this positive stuff.'"
Leaks, of course, are nothing new in the music industry. One notable case of artist-driven leaking is that of the Death Grips, who were dropped late in 2012 when Epic Records realized they were purposely releasing their own music to the internet.
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