M.I.A. Lashes Out At Record Label After YouTube Pulls Her Latest "Born Free" Video

News

M.I.A. lashed out at her label, Universal Music Group, after her violent music video “Born Free” was yanked from YouTube just hours after its release on Monday.

“F— UMG WHO WON’T SHOW IT ON YOUTUBE! FOR THE U.S.,” M.I.A. tweeted.

But the artist, whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam, quickly changed her position, tweeting that “OK, NOT UMG FAULT!”

Turns out the “Born Free” clip was clipped by YouTube itself.

Directed by Romain Gavras, the video portrays the U.S. as a fascist police state, focusing on a S.W.A.T. unit’s raid of a downtown Los Angeles apartment complex.

The riot-geared cops start rounding up redheaded men, then bus them out to the desert and execute them in gory ways (a boy is shot point-blank in the head, another is blown apart by a bomb). M.I.A. has never shied away from controversy, frequently coming under fire for her views.

But it was the brutality, not the politics, that got YouTube’s attention, according to the powers that be.

A YouTube rep says the video violated the site’s terms of use due to “gratuitous violence.”

Credit: E! Online

Murtz Jaffer is the world's foremost reality television expert and was the host of Reality Obsessed which aired on the TVTropolis and Global Reality Channels in Canada. He has professional writing experience at the Toronto Sun, National Post, TV Guide Canada, TOROMagazine.com and was a former producer at Entertainment Tonight Canada. He was also the editor at Weekendtrips.com.