Photo Credit: M.I.A. by Moses / CC by 2.0
M.I.A. got booed for her remarks during her set in Dallas, leading Kid Cudi to remove her from his Rebel Ragers Tour. Now she’s speaking out.
Over the weekend, M.I.A. had the crowd booing during her set in Dallas on Kid Cudi’s “Rebel Ragers Tour.” The “Paper Planes” singer and rapper claimed she was “cancelled” after revealing she voted Republican and made some remarks about “illegal” immigrants in the audience—though she has since claimed she was referring to her 2010 song “Illygirl.” Nevertheless, Kid Cudi was quick to announce removing her from the rest of the tour.
On May 2, during her opening set at the Dos Equis Pavilion, M.I.A. gave a monologue that led to an increasing amount of boos from the audience. “I’ve been cancelled for many reasons,” she told the crowd. “I never thought I would be cancelled for being a brown Republican voter.” She also said, “I can’t do ‘illegal,’ though some of you could be in the audience.”
Kid Cudi announced the rapper’s departure from the tour on May 4 with a post on Instagram: “M.I.A. is no longer on this tour. I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started a 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 won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that [upset] my fanbase. Thank you for understanding.”
A few hours later, M.I.A. addressed the situation on X (Twitter), writing in all caps.
“I wrote [‘Illygirl’] on the Maya LP, a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m [illegal], and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying ‘[fuck] the law,’ which I still believe; if the law is unjust [fuck] it,” the 50-year-old artist attempted to clarify on the former Twitter.
“I wrote ‘Borders’ and [‘Illygirl’] and ‘Paper Planes’ before you thought immigrant rights were cool,” she ranted. “I’ve had these battles by myself without the help of millions of fans backing me. I don’t need this virtue signal era to all of a sudden erase an entire life I’ve led.”
As Consequence of Sound pointed out, M.I.A. cannot participate in US elections as a UK citizen, but she “followed Robert Kennedy Jr.’s lead in 2024 in endorsing Trump.” The artist reiterated the fact that she can’t vote in the US in another tweet before adding, “48% of the Latin community voted for Trump. So, are you going to hate them all?”
Among her controversies, M.I.A. also declared herself an “anti-vaxxer” in 2020, and even launched a clothing line meant to “block 5G waves” in 2024 on Alex Jones’ Infowars.
Needless to say, fans of Kid Cudi remarked on Reddit that M.I.A. was an odd choice as an opener on the tour to begin with. “She wasn’t just booed; people screamed […] at her,” wrote one Redditor. “She was there the wrong night. The previous night Kid Rock was on and that was more her crowd.”
