Amidst an ongoing surge of negative press after a much-publicised spate of ranty quotes/tweets, M.I.A. decided to send a message to her fans by getting back onstage and letting her performance do the talking. Unfortunately for Maya she screwed up her latest chance to get fans and press back onside – as well as get some positive hype circulating for her new album, ///Y/, by playing a sub-par set and controversially hocking a loogie onto one of the pit photographers.
This weekend she headlined Hard Fest in New York City and instead of playing hard she sucked hard. Her set was cut short by a thunder storm but according to reports the audience was bailing well before she was forced to shut it down. She threw bottles of tequila into the crowd during the track “Teqkilla” and got totally put off by the technical difficulties. The crew backstage cut her sound after the weather turned and M.I.A. initially refused to leave the stage, at one point was rapping without any backing tracks for several (long) minutes.
M.I.A. soon left the stage – but not before spitting directly at a photographer from the Brooklyn Vegan.
The New York Times wrote: M.I.A.’s vocals were often so buried in echo, and the bass so bloated, that her lyrics just became more of the din, and the songs that she segued together like a disc-jockey set were barely distinguishable. Instead of a barrage, it was a morass.
One Youtube user / M.I.A. fan took the following video and under the footage post wrote:
“Are you F-ing kidding MIA?
MIA finally starts her show and performs with no vocals for 3 songs like no one notices!?!?!?!?
Were you that f-ed up you didn’t notice? You wasted the short amount of time you had on stage playing with lasers, plugging taquilla, telling us your not rich (Girl, you are doing better than all of us that just paid $60 to see your ass), and asking the crowd what they wanted to hear. Guess what we wanted to hear…. you perform. You should have commanded that stage like the badass you used to be and got shit working. Die Antwoord didn’t take shit from the sound guys and they were your opener. Rye Rye’s mic was working. Why the hell didn’t you just take hers? It was like you knew the rain was coming, didn’t want to be there and thought you could just ride it out till they shut you down. Such a let down!!!!!
Following her performance, she Tweeted the next day:
“money doesnt buy u shit! i thought more money means better sound guys in america///! i was wrong, the higher u go , they turn u lower!”
Then minutes later: “>>>> EUROPE! >>>> NEW BRITISH SOUND TEAM! but the lesson is, its not technology! that still didn’t stop us! its bigger then that!”
Obviously the sound crew were at fault for the badly received performance.
Today she offered to rectify the experience of the audience tweeting: “fuck it! im gonna do a free show in nyc when i get back, tho i dont have powers over rain! if u still have the hard ticket u free! xxxo”
You got to hand it to her: an offer to make up for the faults of an inept sound team and the indestructible power from above is mighty considerate.
Via Huff Post
Image by: Christopher Polk via Getty
