M.I.A. Photo by Getty Images

M.I.A.'s upcoming, long-delayed fourth album shares itsname with Matangi, the Hindu goddess of music and learning. The title may reflect a newfound spirituality for the Sri Lankan artist (whose birth name, Mathangi, also derives from "Matangi"), but M.I.A. didn't find faith through some fit of divine inspiration. She discovered it where else? through a search engine."I just found spirituality on Google," she told Faderrecently, "Which I hate."

The singer-rapper explains further, saying, "I Googled 'green,' andMatangipopped up. When I typed in 'Matangi,' it was me and then her on the two top links. Hers was like: 'She's got four arms and carried a sword because she fights for truth, but, like, lives in the ghetto and in the hood and has intoxicated eyes,' which kind of sounds like she smokes weed.I was like, 'Wow, she sounds pretty cool.' I sort of stopped thinking about my own life and I started thinking about hers, and spent time in India, going to universities and temples, looking for things that I could figure out, about women."

The idea of a hood-dwelling goddess fascinated M.I.A., who says she "never knew anything about spirituality" before. "[Matangi]was a gangster, she was from the hood, but she was a goddess and hangs out in the jungle," the 38-year-old says. "Loads of things about her werent like the roles in spirituality that were used to in the West, that youre either a whore like Mary Magdalene, or a Virgin Mary and conceive a child without having sex. Those two roles were not an option for me. In Hinduism, theyve got women who are into time-bending quantum physics... I became interested in all the multi-faceted ways a woman can exist, what the options for being a woman are."

But M.I.A. wants to clarify that the follow-up to 2010'sMAYAisn't explicitly "about women." That said, she tells Fader that she "wanted to make another way for women to exist that wasnt competing with Miley Cyrus who can be more slutty or to present it as, 'Im this completely clean person'...Matangiis more like, reproduction, feminine power and celebrating life."

Read the entire Q&A over at Fader, and for an extended preview of M.I.A.'s next LP (out November 5), listen to previously released tracks"Come Walk With Me,""Bring the Noize,""Only 1 U,""AtTENTion,"and"Bad Girls."And also check out a just-released snippet of new song "Y.A.L.A."

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M.I.A.: 'I Found Spirituality on Google'