M.I.A. removed from Kid Cudi tour after making anti-immigrant comments onstage

I’m really not loving the running trend of iconic late-2000s/early-2010s rappers spiraling down the MAGA pipeline, but M.I.A. seems deadset on continuing it. She’s been descending ever-deeper into the depths of right-wing psychosis for a while now—and, weirdly, a lot of it seems to be 5G-based. Back in 2020, she insisted that Wi-Fi and the expanding 5G network were secretly the catalyst for COVID-19, and tweeted: “If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death.” In 2024, she launched a “tin foil hat” fashion line—literally; it included an actual tin foil hat—that presented the ability to block “99.99 per cent of Wi-Fi, 4G, and 5G from the brain” and called itself “the armour of the modern knight in the age of modern technological warfare.” Just last month, she wore some of that “anti-surveillance” garb during her surprise Coachella performance alongside Major Lazer. So, really, it goes without saying that the once-popstar has been going through it.

Her latest controversy has little to do with LTE and a lot to do with politics. The British singer was slated to open for Kid Cudi throughout his current tour, but a series of charged onstage rants in Dallas this past Saturday got her officially booted from the entourage. She announced, “I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” into the mic, and an onslaught of crowd boos followed. A TikTok from the concert shows M.I.A. additionally making incendiary comments about immigrants: “We can’t perform [‘Illygal’], though some of you could be in the audience.” This was, of course, followed by more booing. Bafflingly, she then changed her tune in a heel-turn presumably meant to appease the heckling crowd, saying: “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.”

Today, Kid Cudi posted an Instagram story announcing that the “Paper Planes” singer would no longer be opening for him. “M.I.A. is no longer on this tour. 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,” he wrote. “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.”