yeah I just read some article in the NYTimes about this. It felt like a "the new MIA album is going to be controversial and political and deep and she doesn't care if there's backlash"-kind of marketing, sprinkled with a bit of "but the Tigers are terrorists and she's not helping the real Tamil population by glamourizing them"-angle PC correctness/fakenewsreporting.

She is not afraid to take leaps stylistically/sonically/politically. But she misses the mark a bit too often for me.

Paper Planes was really good though. It was funny how it was out for so long, but then got picked up by... what... was it Pineaple Express?? and then it was EVERYWHERE for a while, despite old folks being pissed it talked about robbing and had guns cocking and shooting in the chorus... hahaha....

So it makes perfect sense for her to play up the controversy on her new album.