New M.I.A. Video Censored For “Cultural Appropriation”

M.I.A. is all fired up about her new video being censored for "cultural appropriation," but since no one has seen the video (or knows which song its for) at this point, it's tough to tell what's actually going on here. The ban likely comes from Interscope, her label, although this has not yet been confirmed. The musician took to Twitter today, calling on her fans to weigh in on whether or not it was fair that her video got pulled for featuring Africa as its backdrop, while providing limited details on the content itself.  From what we can gather, the video was shot on the Ivory Coast and features a long, uninterrupted shot of a single Ivorian dancer. Last year, the English artist accused her label of holding the video she directed for the song "Double Bubble Trouble." "My label has my video, they havnt uploaded for 4 days > they wont let me upload > whats is the point? smh," she tweeted at the time. It was eventually released, but it seems like the musician and Interscope are continuing to bump heads.  One thing is for certain: Cultural appropriation is a many-headed hydra, and how it applies to this particular scenario is still pretty fuzzy (although, Amandla Stenberg did a pretty great job of how white artists "borrow" black heritage earlier this year). In any case, we're sure this isn't the last we'll hear about it from M.I.A.