Kid Cudi says he removed M.I.A. from his tour over offensive ‘rants’ at show

Kid Cudi announced that he was cutting M.I.A. as an opener on his current tour after he says fans reached out over the singer’s “offensive remarks” and “rants” on stage.

The rapper, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi, wrote on his Instagram story that the British rapper and singer would no longer appear on his “Rebel Ragers” tour following his Dallas show.

Mescudi wrote that he had notified her team prior to the start of the tour that he did not want “anything offensive” at his shows and was assured she understood.

“After the last couple shows, I’ve been flooding with messages from fans that were upset by her rants,” Mescudi wrote. “This, to me, is very disappointing and I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase.”

Mescudi’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

M.I.A.’s legal name is Mathangi Arulpragasam, though she also often goes by Maya. She gained popularity in the early 2000s with singles such as “Paper Planes” and “Galang.”

It’s unclear exactly what happened with Arulpragasam on the tour, but many fans posted online that she was booed on stage during Mescudi’s Dallas show on Saturday. Some clips of her comments were posted online, but the full context of her remarks are unclear.

She allegedly talked to the crowd about her Republican political views, according to a caption on one video, before telling the audience she would not perform her song “Illygal” though some in the crowd “might be.”

“Alright, I’m illegal,” Arulpragasam said in a video from the show shared online. “Half of my team are not here because they didn’t get the visa, OK? I want you to know that. Alright so don’t listen to what the bots say on the internet.”

Arulpragasam also said, “we should be above politics,” according to the video.

Representatives for Arulpragasam did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

She did respond to the criticism in posts on X, writing in one that she wrote the song “Illygal” in 2010 and started the intro by saying her team hadn’t received visas. She wrote that she had no apology for the judgmental, the wicked, and the ignorant.

“I wrote borders and ‘Illygal’ and ‘Paper Planes’ before you thought immigrant rights were cool,” she wrote. “I’ve had thses 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.”

Arulpragasam pointed out that she cannot vote in the U.S. in response to a user on X who said she endorsed President Donald Trump. She also posted the question of whether the user would hate all Trump voters.

“We must unite to make this country, that everyone wants to live in a better place,” she wrote.

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