If you were wondering why M.I.A. decidedly turned away from the momentum she had mustered between 2007-2010. It's not because her next efforts flat lined. The NFL was at the peak of its earning power when M.I.A. did the unthinkable and put her finger up at at Super Bowl XLVI.
There was an unidentified current working against her from that point forward, at least on the domestic front. Several years after fact, M.I.A. has revealed that none other than other Jay-Z, who was managing her career at the time, instructed her to sign a settlement with the league, to which she flatly refused. She had the following to say in conversation with Huck Magazine:
“If you’re talking about racism and sexism, that moment in my life showed the cracks in everyone I knew. I was at Roc Nation at the time and Jay Z was managing me. The lawsuit was so ridiculous, it proposed that they would keep one hundred percent of my earnings for the rest of my life if I ever earned more than $2 million dollars. Jay Z was, like, ‘you should sign that shit’ and I was, like, ‘no.’”
She has since settled privately with the NFL through an arbiter. Her testament of character is far stronger than any dollar amount.