Perhaps this is the reason she gave the middle finger during the Super Bowl on Sunday. A big “F U” to her now ex? The NY Daily News is reporting the singer and her longtime boyfriend, who is heir to a $2.5 billion fortune, have split…with him in staying in New York with their son Ikhyd, and she in London. More details below.
In the wake of the “Paper Planes†singer’s Super Bowl controversy, sources tell us the London-born beauty has split with Benjamin Bronfman , her longtime fiancé and the father of her son.
One insider tells us that M.I.A., 36, is spending most of her time in her native London, while Bronfman, 29, and their progeny, Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman , who turns 3 on Saturday, are living in New York. The source adds that Ben’s mother, philanthropist Sherry Bronfman , is helping to take care of his son.
Another source says that M.I.A., whose real name is Mathangi (Maya) Arulpragasam, “sometimes goes six weeks without seeing†Ikhyd.
Bronfman, an environmentalist and former guitarist for the punk reggae band The Exit, is also the son of Seagram heir Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Shortly before Ikhyd was born in 2009, the couple bought a house in the exclusive Brentwood section of Los Angeles.
M.I.A., who has a new single out, “Bad Girls,†talked marriage in a number of 2010 interviews, but reportedly said she wanted to wait until she settled immigration issues.
Although the hip-hop star apparently got a visa to appear in Madonna ’s Super Bowl halftime show — where she made headlines by flipping the bird in front of NBC cameras — she previously had trouble entering the U.S., due to controversial remarks she’s made about conflict in her parents’ native Sri Lanka and her father’s alleged links to the terrorist group Tamil Tigers.
M.I.A. told Fader magazine in 2010 that she refused to get her green card by simply marrying Bronfman.
“That’s what they want me to do, but I’m not going to lose my integrity for that s—,†she said. “I actually want a nice wedding. I’m not going to blow that.â€
Reps for M.I.A. did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. An email to Bronfman’s business, Global Thermostat, on the upper West Side, also produced no response, but we hear the green entrepreneur already may have moved on.
Bronfman looked like he was on a date last week when he was spotted at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem with a beautiful woman.
