M.I.A. is back in the music studio.
The 39-year-old Grammy-nominated Paper Planes rapper hasn’t released a record since her fourth studio album Matangi hit shelves in 2013.
But much to the delight of millions of fans, M.I.A. is currently working on some fresh tracks.
“Studio #holup (sic),” she wrote on Instagram on Friday, attaching the caption to a picture of herself standing in front musical equipment with her mouth agape.
Although Matangi received praise from many critics, the album didn’t chart as high as her previous LPs Maya, Kala and Arular.
M.I.A., real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, has previously spoken about her creative goals with Matangi.
The album is named after the Hindu goddess of music and the songstress explored numerous out-of-the-box concepts while penning tracks for the offering.
"I was exploring and as the album grew I realised it was a landscape of sound," she explained to MTV News in the past.
"It wasn't like Kala or any of my other albums where it was really a specific sound. It was an ode to everything that was good about music that I love, so it's a retrospective of music — not particularly mine, but everyone's -and the Weeknd was played a lot during the years I wrote this album so I guess it seeped in."
M.I.A. also took the opportunity to infuse Matangi with religious overtones.
But she admitted her extremely creative approach to the album might have put some people off.
"[Reincarnation] is 5,000 years old and it's a bit weird for people," she noted in the MTV News interview.
"At first I didn't know how the concept of Matangi even works in India, in the place where [it originated], so to bring it to the West and be like, 'There's this concept that's a bit weird' was difficult.”
