Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's new MIA-featuring TV series to air from tomorrow (April 17)

Last month the rapper became embroiled in an online row with CNN presenter Anderson Cooper over her political stance on Sri Lanka following Channel 4 documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpublished.

Taking to Twitter, she hit out at journalists who had criticised her stance on the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Her father Arul Pragasam is a leading Tamil activist and she has previously accused the nation's government of engaging in systematic genocide.

MIA is set to release a new album later this year. The LP will be MIA's fourth studio album and her first for her new label Mercury Records. Rumoured to feature contributions from Swizz Beats, Cataracs and Chris Brown, it will be the follow-up to her last effort, 'Maya', which was released in 2010.

MIA's 192-page biography will is also set to be published in October. To watch archive footage going behind the scenes of NME photoshoot with the singer, scroll down and click below.