The controversy-courting artist sets a release date for her fourth album.

Just barely missing the cut of our most anticipated albums of the new year is M.I.A.’s Matangi. Originally slated for a 2012 release, M.I.A. says the album will be out this spring.

“It’s due in April, which is the Tamil new year—April 15th—and I’m still working on it,” Maya told Australia’s Gold Coast Bulletin. “I thought I’d finished it. I finished it and then I handed the record in, like a couple of months ago,” she says, attributing the delay to her record label, Interscope.

Apparently, the label was surprised by the tone of the record. “At the moment, I’ve been told it’s too positive. So we’re having a bit of an issue at the label. They’re like, ‘You need to like darken it up a bit,’” said Maya, paraphrasing her label’s reaction as “‘We just built you up as the public enemy No. 1 and now you’re coming out with all this positive stuff.'”

She has previously described the album as sounding like “Paul Simon on acid”, so we’re not sure what her label was expecting. [via Rap-up]