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Maya Arulpragasam’s Brooklyn apartment was a neglected mess whenshe finally returned to it after six months overseas. But it tookonly a day to straighten it up and turn it into her version of apied-a-terre, a makeshift multimedia headquarters. An audio mixingboard, film canisters and shiny gold and black dancing outfitsstand on one side of the apartment and half an uneaten papaya waitson a table in the back.

Arulpragasam, better known as the rapper M.I.A., is in town foronly about a week before going on tour, and when I ask when shewill return to the spacious studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, aCaribbean and African immigrant neighbourhood, she shrugs. “I spenttime finding that couch,” she says, pointing to one of the fewitems of furniture, “and I haven’t even sat in it.”

Displacement is nothing new for M.I.A. In fact, she seems tothrive on it. A description of her life and music is inevitablylike one of those old movie montages in which a plane zigzagsacross a map from continent to distant continent. She left SriLanka at the age of nine, a refugee from an ethnic civil war that’sstill roiling, and discovered hip-hop in a London housing project.After art school in Britain she began making music that was simpleand handmade but had a far-reaching ambition, with flirty yetbrutally evocative lyrics set against whip-crack electro beats,dancehall reggae and Brazilian baile funk.

Her debut album, Arular (2005), sold a modest 129,000copies but hit a critical jackpot, both in the mainstream press andthe blogosphere. For her follow-up, Kala, released earlier thismonth, the original strategy was the conventional one: to pair withbrand-name producers and shoot for pop hits. But things did not goaccording to plan. Instead, the album became, by necessity and bychoice, another restless, far-flung journey.

Blocked from returning to the US for most of the last yearbecause of delays in renewing her working visa, she wound uptravelling to India, Jamaica, Trinidad and Australia, where sherecorded with the Wilcannia Mob. The resulting songs feel airborneand deliberately rootless. The enormous drums of Boyz, for example,were recorded in India but the rest of the song - aBollywood-tinged club banger about the rowdy, war-starting sex -was made in Trinidad. World Town rewrites a Baltimorehip-hop anthem for a violent Third World ghetto. The dizzyinglyabstract percussion loop of BirdFlu is spiked with Indiandhol drums and chicken squawks.