"There are a lot of people right now who are toying with the idea of mystery — Lady Gaga, for example — but M.I.A. is an actual enigma. She's self-aware and toys with the notion of "Who am I?" She's actually singing about something meaningful, but she's putting it in the context of dance and rap. It's like looking at a bunch of bicycle reflectors; you're just not sure what's actually going on. But that's good."

"My five favorite films would change from, you know, day to day, but if you want five of my favorite films, one would have to be The Rules of the Game, by Renoir. A fabulous upstairs-downstairs look at French society in a very particular period. It’s both unbelievably sad and tragic, and moving and funny. And a delightfully humanist film. In fact, a lot of my favorite films are like that."

"It’s like a surge of intimacy of human beings, you know? It is spectacular. It is well done, a lot of actors, and I like very much Coppola as a director. I like the performance of the main role, the guy…he had a heart attack. I don’t remember his name. Martin Sheen. I almost said Martin Short. [laughs] I like also the performance of Marlon Brando. I like it very much, that movie."

"I loved every song on that CD and that was right when I first started partying and drinking and girls were huge in my life. That was the CD that you could put on at a party in high school and put it on spin and convince girls to show you their boobs. There’s just a lot of getting high and trying to figure out exactly what Nate Dogg would say. ‘Smoke weed every day."

"You know, a movie that I always come back to, which is a documentary — I hope that’s okay — is American Movie, which I think is one of the funniest and saddest movies I’ve ever seen. So quotable. And it really says a lot about hope, optimism, naivete, the movie business. Even though they’re hundreds of miles away from LA and have no real access to Hollywood… I just love that movie so much."

"I cover this song quite a lot—I’m really into dumb, hook-y choruses. That’s my favorite thing about pop music, when a song is so dumb that it’s clever; ’I Want Candy’ is a perfect example of that. I also love the singer Annabella Lwin, how she was 15 years old and punk as fuck. I listen to this song before I go on stage, and it always makes me feel free"