M.I.A has dropped a new track in response to Lynn Hirschberg’s controversial New York Times article that questions the pop star’s political effectiveness.

Hirschberg was dismissive of M.I.A.’s intellectual ability to understand the complexity of the situation in Sri Lanka, among other things. Here are some choice excerpts:

Unity holds no allure for Maya — she thrives on conflict, real or imagined. “I kind of want to be an outsider,” she said, eating a truffle-flavored French fry. “I don’t want to make the same music, sing about the same stuff, talk about the same things. If that makes me a terrorist, then I’m a terrorist.”

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What Maya wants is nearly impossible to achieve: she wants to balance outrageous political statements with a luxe lifestyle; to be supersuccessful yet remain controversial; for style to merge with substance.

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She speaks carefully, slowly, with a kind of deadpan delivery. Like a trained politician, she stays on message. It’s hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd.

M.I.A. is a political artist and she is rightfully outraged by the inhumanity of the situation in Sri Lanka. Whether she’s effective or not is an interesting question, but I don’t know if Hirschberg’s article is particularly revelatory in that regard. I’m not sure the fact that she eats fancy french fries means that she does more harm than good.  What worries me is whether M.I.A. is just lashing out blindly instead of trying to deescalate a vicious situation (See the video for “Born Free” as an example).

In the end, I don’t think the wool has been pulled over anyone’s eyes, as Hirschberg would have readers believe. M.I.A is a human being and is contradictory and flawed by nature. As the lyrics M.I.A. samples in the new song go: “I am a sinner. Never said anything else. I didn’t lie to you. Thinking of somebody else.”