MIA moved to Los Angeles because the smell of New York made her sick when she was pregnant.
The ‘Paper Planes’ hitmaker – who has eight-year-old son Ikhyd with former partner Benjamin Bronfman – admitted she didn’t have an easy time when she was expecting her little boy and ended up having to relocate because her sickness was so debilitating.
She said: "I was so sick. Smell was what triggered it.
"In New York, as soon as I stepped out of my front door, I projectile vomited.
"It wasn’t food, it wasn’t people, it was the city itself.
"I’d puke in traffic jams, at the grocery store, everywhere.
"I had to keep moving further out until I basically got to the countryside, then eventually I moved to LA. I had to move states because it was so intense."
The 41-year-old singer – whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam – admitted she "struggles" to juggle raising her son with her career but has learned to adapt to fit her work around Ikhyd’s timetable.
She told Red magazine: "I struggle. It’s difficult to order it into a schedule, but I’m finding different ways of doing it.
"I still have as many ideas as I ever did. You just have to work in chunks.
"My son goes to school now, so I try to get it all out then. Which is funny because you can’t really turn my work on and off. Luckily my son is really funny – he just calls me crazy."