From the amount written about Maya Arulpragasam or her musical moniker M.I.A., you would think she had sold millions of records and be headlining summer stadium gigs, not the O2 Academy on a freezing Thursday night.

Arulpragasam is more famous for falling out with journalists, encountering visa issues and being an over-active social networker than making music. Five years into her career, M.I.A. is a name people know, but most can’t place a tune of hers. Having said that, her sales of just shy of a million albums are pretty phenomenal, given that despite all her fame, M.I.A. produces a blend of hip hop, grime, dubstep and bhangra that would normally only be of interest to those who live and breathe music.

Her notoriety has given her cause to step up her stage show, though. Once accompanied only by a DJ, she now has two back-up dancers, a dizzying set of lights and projections and an occasional drummer. The DJ remains and allows M.I.A.’s hour-long set to move at a furious pace, flicking through track after track with no pause for breath. She rifles through her back catalogue, with early singles Galang and Bucky Done Gun riling up the O2 crowd nicely. She progresses through the set, firing off cuts from all three of her albums including a deafeningly loud version of Born Free. She winds up with the song she’s best known for, Paper Planes, which was given a big boost by its presence on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. This track sums up everything M.I.A. is all about. It straddles a plethora of musical genres with its grimy beat, standoffish verses that tell of her visa troubles, frequent gunshot samples and a huge poppy chorus. Column inches rarely equate to interesting and challenging music, but in M.I.A.’s case, she’s well worth every word that gets written about her.