When M.I.A. ties the knot, don't expect a white veil and mile-long train.
"I've always wanted to get married in a white suit," the singer, 34, tells GQ magazine. The eclectic, button-pushing "Paper Planes" musician explains: "I used to work at a Kodak lab in England, cutting photos after they'd come out of the wash, and in one I saw this couple getting married on a beach in white suits, and their kid was there."
London-born, Sri Lanka-raised M.I.A. (real name: Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) is engaged to Benjamin Bronfman, an environmentalist, musician and heir to the beverage dynasty. She gave birth to their son Ikhyd in February 2009, just days after she performed at the Grammys.
Although she's known for her politically-charged lyrics and a controversial past (her late father was a member of separatist group the Tamil Tigers), the new mom and bride-to-be says she's mellowed out. She and Bronfman moved from the hip, edgy Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to posh Brentwood, Calif. for their little boy.
"I wanted an environment where I could have a lot of friends and family come and stay. That was the important part for me," she tells GQ. "And in New York I wouldn't have been able to afford someplace where I could have, like, all my friends come and crash out and where I could still have a baby."
Her own childhood in Sri Lanka was much different than Brentwood, she admits: "I lived on a street, a dead-end street. There were like seven or eight houses, and then you turn the corner and there was another seven, eight houses. But my whole family lived on the street. So it was amazing. I grew up with about a hundred of my cousins, playing hide-and-seek all over the village and the temples."
M.I.A.'s third album, // / Y /, will be released July 13.
