BORN FREE

This bombastic New Punk track was written and produced by British alternative dance musician Maya Arulpragasam, who records under the name of M.I.A. The song was created in collaboration with her production partners Diplo and Switch, and American indie rock guitarist John Hill. Igor Cavalera, once of Brazilian thrash metal band Sepultura, played the drums. A blog for Diplo's Mad Decent label declared: "It was a royal mess of all our good buds- Switch, John Hill, and Diplo plus Iggor Cavalera (1/2 Mixhell, ex-Sepultura)! All those dudes in a room, a generous sample of Suicide, sick sick drumming from Iggor (and here's another tidbit for u - it was recorded on POPO's s--tty ass drumset at the mausoleum!) - and you got it."

This samples "Ghost Rider," which is a 1977 song by the synthpunk band Suicide. The Suicide song itself was named after the Ghost Rider Marvel antihero comics.

A short film featuring the song, which doubles as its music video, was directed by Frenchman Romain Gavras, the son of film director Costa-Gavras whose credits include Z and Missing. The nine-minute epic features nudity, graphic violence and a plot where red-haired teenagers are rounded up into an armour-protected van, driven to the desert, treated brutally, and forced to run across a live minefield. Unsurprisingly it has proved controversial and although the clip initially appeared on YouTube, it was later hidden by the site's staff after enough viewers flagged the clip for objectionable content.
During the course of events a child is shown shot through the head. Twelve-year-old Ian Hamrick, who played the redheaded adolescent, told TMZ he was aware of the gruesome storyline, but he felt it made a powerful statement. "I think she was trying to show violence to end violence," Hamrick told the site. "The video is definitely not for kids - I haven't even seen the full video myself - but for all the adults and people in different countries who are doing that in real life... doing the genocides to whatever: Italians, Africans, wherever it's from, it's still genocide. So it's showing violence to end violence."