M.I.A.‘s album AIM is due out next month and is a record that the musician has indicated will very possibly be her last.
The record is set to have some incredible collaborations on it, and we’ve already heard her join up with with Skrillex on a track called Go Off.
Now M.I.A. has revealed that the record will also contain a collab with Zayn Malik and that the two of them wrote the song over WhatsApp. The track is called Freedun – and the British artist told EW that they’d recently finished the song despite never having actually met up in person.
The new collab was “mastered yesterday,” she said. “We just basically did it while I was here (in India), because I’ve been here for a week-and-a-half. We’ve just been going back and forth on, you know, WhatsApp.”
She went on to reveal that her friendship with Malik extended back to when she almost helped to write a song for Zayn’s album Mind Of Mine. “We have the same publishers and they wanted me to demo some songs for Zayn,” she said.
Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t quite right as she’d just begun to write AIM. “Before I started writing properly my own stuff, I was thinking maybe I’ll write for other people instead. I really wanted to write a song for Zayn….We had a couple people in common. And that’s how it came about. I didn’t really approach him for my own record until later on. First, I thought I wanted to try writing a song for him.”
Watch: M.I.A. – Go Off
