Rapper Kid Cudi has fired MIA from his tour after the British artist went on a rant that went viral while on stage in Dallas.
While opening up for the hip-hop artist on 2 May, MIA was booed after saying, “I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” as reported by Variety.
Today, Kid Cudi confirmed MIA would no longer be accompanying him on the road in an Instagram story post.
“M.I.A. is no longer on this tour,” he wrote. “I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood.
“After the last couple shows, I’ve been flooded with messages from fans that were upset by her rants. This, to me, is very disappointing and I wont have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase.”
A TikTok post from the 2 May tour date shows MIA saying: “We can’t perform [my song] Illegal, though some of you could be in the audience.” After the audience booed, she she said, “All right, I’m illegal. Half of my team are not here because they didn’t get the visa, OK? I want you to know that. All right? So don’t listen to what the bots say on the internet.”
After Kid Cudi’s post, MIA responded: “I wrote illygal on the Maya LP a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m illygal, and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying “Fu&% the law”, which I still believe, if the law is unjust f@%& it.”
She also replied to a tweet asking if she voted for Donald Trump, saying: “Don’t be an agent of division, I can’t vote in the US, and 48% of Latin community voted trump. So are you going to hate them all?”
The Guardian has approached MIA’s representative for comment.
The British artist has come under fire in recent years for her inflammatory social media posts. She has claimed that Covid-19 was partly caused by the expanding 5G data network, and fueled claims that she was a vaccine skeptic with a 2020 tweet that said: “If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death.”
In a 2022 interview with the Guardian, she said that she was anti-cancel culture: “I think everyone should be having open conversations – we don’t all have to, like, build effigies of people and burn them in the street for saying something, going after them like Guy Fawkes, because of fear of being seen as the other.”
Earlier this year, MIA joined Major Lazer on stage at Coachella to perform her global hit Paper Planes. She drew attention for an unusual outfit which covered her entire body, which seemed to be from her “anti-surveillance” clothing brand Ohmni. The fashion line claims to protect the body from 5G, wi-fi and bluetooth. The World Health Organization has debunked claims that this technology has a negative effect on humans.
In April, the musician released her seventh album M.I.7 via her own label Ohmni Music.
