M.I.A. has revealed that her new album '/\/\ /\ Y /\' was influenced by death threats she received towards her unborn child.

The singer told Dazed and Confused that she spent the last months of her pregnancy watching Sri Lankan news reports which showed "hundreds of babies being blown up" and was scared of bringing her own child into the world.

"People were sending me death threats and telling me bad s**t about my kid... People would write on Twitter and YouTube, 'Your baby is going to die', because I was talking about the Sri Lankan government and the issues that were going on there," she explained. "At the same time I was pregnant and I didn't want to have to deal with that s**t but I had no choice. It was the month they decided to end a 30-year long civil war so it wasn't like I could go, 'Ooo, sorry I just can't deal with this right now, I've got a baby on the way!' Maybe I should have done that."

She added that the ordeal informed the material on '/\/\ /\ Y /\'. "I think the album is a mixture of all those things - babies, death, destruction and powerlessness."