M.I.A. goes huge at the Grammys

U2 was upstaged by one of the most unusual spectacles in the history of the awards, as M.I.A., the outspoken Sri Lankan-British rapper, performed while nine months pregnant — indeed, she had been due to give birth on Sunday. She joined the rap dream team of Jay-Z, T. I., Kanye West and Lil Wayne, whose song “Swagga Like Us” samples M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” which itself had been up for record of the year.

Gyrating across the stage in a sheer black costume with her protruding belly wrapped in black and white polka dots, she shared the stage with four of the most popular rappers in music, although most eyes in the arena were surely on her for much of the performance.

New Lily Allen

Looking forward to picking up the new Lily Allen album, It’s Not Me, It’s You - she is so good at being a pop star that I really want to like it.


Great article in today's NYT. She really gives great interview:

At the restaurant Ms. Allen rejected the maitre’d’s offer of a discreet corner table; we were seated in the middle of the room, facing the door. She walked in as if she would turn a few heads, and she did.

Dinner was lavish and fun. Ms. Allen is the right kind of girl to drink wine and talk about boys with. There is, especially in her case, a lot to say. “I don’t really go for hot guys,” she said. “I go for old men, as you may have noticed.” In the car on the way over, she’d devoured a Look magazine her driver bought because she was on the cover. “Agony over married lover!” read the headline, detailing her latest holiday fling, with Jay Jopling, 45, a recently separated gallery owner and buddy of her father’s. (Yes, she acknowledged, she has some daddy issues.) Does she mind that her relationships are so gossiped about?

“It’s ironic because I’m not very good at them,” she said. “I’m good at having sex.”

She had more to say, but nothing that could be printed here. This is the kind of irresistible frankness that has gotten her, time and again, in trouble. But as she grows up and builds her creative niche, Ms. Allen seems unlikely to manage being buttoned up. (At the end of the meal she went over to greet Lucian Freud, the 86-year-old artist, sitting nearby. What did he say? “He said he wants to. ...” Ah, unprintable.)