GRAMMY SoundChecks With M.I.A.

Presented by Verizon, the San Francisco Chapter hosted GRAMMY SoundChecks with M.I.A. for 20 high school students from Youth Movement Records.

M.I.A. candidly spoke to students about her career, the personal messages and social/political content in her music, and composing and creating songs as a way to find her own identity. When asked about the challenges she's faced in her career, M.I.A. cited her lack of business knowledge as an initial obstacle, evidenced by her writing and self-producing all of the songs on an album project and then proffering an unnecessary percentage to the album's engineers. When asked about her future, M.I.A. told the students, "I want to find the boundaries of music. I want to break the rules of music so much that I get shot down in public. You have to be fresh and be yourself, unique. I can give this all up tomorrow in order to be fresh. That's the attitude I have to maintain."

M.I.A.'s message of "keeping your freedom" in music gave students a sense of empowerment and inspiration as they set out on their own career paths.