Following her dismissal from Kid Cudi’s Rebel Ragers Tour, rapper and singer M.I.A. has responded to the backlash for her apparent political rants during her recent performances.
The 50-year-old musician, who has previously indicated that she supports President Donald Trump, responded to a video that showed her talking to the audience during the Rebel Ragers stop in Dallas on Sunday (May 5). The person who posted the clip claimed that M.I.A. told the audience that she was a Republican, while in another video, she pointed to several concertgoers and suggested they were “illegal” and that she couldn’t perform her song “Illygal” as a result.
“I wrote ‘Illygal’ on the Maya LP a song from 2010,” M.I.A. wrote in all caps. “I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m illygal, and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. [M.I.A. was born in London to Sri Lankan Tamil parents]. Then played a song that had lyrics saying ‘fuck the law,’ which I still believe, if the law is unjust fuck it. Do not gas light my words. That is the work of Satan. I wrote ‘Borders’ and ‘Illygal’ and ‘Paper Planes’ before you thought immigrant rights were cool. I’ve had these battles myself without the help of millions of fans backing me.”
She accused critics of her concert rants of “virtue signalling” and attempting to “erase” the life she’s lived. “I have no apology for the judgmental and wicked and the ignorant, for those are spirits that we must overcome in our lives and in this world. … Jesus returns to lead the world justly because there is injustice in this world. I’m proud of those who fight for it every day.”
She later responded to a fan who accused her of endorsing Trump in the past, because she previously tweeted, “Trump is going to ride America through the most challenging 4 years.” In that same tweet, she suggested that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a vaccine skeptic like her, would “inherit America when God is ready to replant and rebuild it righteously.”
“Don’t be an agent of division,” she told the fan. “I can’t vote in the U.S., and 48% of [the] Latin community voted Trump. So are you going to hate them all? We must unite to make this country, that everyone wants to live in a better place. If you are [easily] led by rumor then you don’t see the light for yourself. I pray for your awakening.”
She also reposted her old tweet about Trump and RFK Jr., which she suggested was actually about her “common sense prediction that Trump was gonna win” the 2024 election. She clarified that she would rather the country be led by Republican and Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, a noted critic of Trump, instead of RFK Jr., however.
When a fan suggested that by supporting the current administration of the United States is “a pedo protecting, war mongering piece of shit,” she countered, “Americans supporting either side denying they are both owned by Israel is a whole convo we can’t seem to get to.”
When Cudi announced that M.I.A. had been removed from the tour, he said that he told his management to let her team know that he didn’t want “anything offensive” at his shows.
“After the last couple shows, I’ve been flooded with messages from fans that were upset by her rants,” he continued. “This, to me, is very disappointing and I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase. Thank you for understanding.”
