Rapper M.I.A. will be M.I.A. from the rest of her latest tour gig, thanks to her onstage remarks about “illegals,” which got her loudly booed and then fired.
“I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” she said as she was booed, according to fans present during the opening act of Kid Cudi’s May 2nd show in Dallas.
M.I.A. was set to open for his “The Rebel Ragers Tour” across North America, until he fired the MAGA star on Monday.
“TOUR UPDATE: M.I.A is no longer on this tour,” the rapper wrote in a statement posted to Instagram. “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.”
The early-2000s star had been open about her “Republican” views for years prior to Kid Cudi’s tour invite.
He continued, “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. Thank you for understanding. Rager.”
The firing comes after the Sri-Lankan-born British rapper was captured on video saying she wouldn’t perform her song “Illygal” (pronounced “illegal”) because “some of you could be in the audience.”
The TikTok clip shows the moments at the Saturday show when the rapper, whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam, was booed for the comments—and loudly.
M.I.A. defended herself in an X post on Monday, writing to a peeved fan who posted the video footage, “DO NOT GAS LIGHT MY WORDS. THAT IS THE WORK OF SATAN.” She added that she wrote “Illygal” in 2010.
“I DON’T NEED THIS VIRTUE SIGNAL ERA TO ALL OF A SUDDEN ERASE AN ENTIRE LIFE I’VE LED,” she also wrote. “JESUS WAS AN IMMIGRANT AND A REBEL. I HAVE NO APPOLGY FOR THE JUDGEMENTAL THE WICKED AND THE IGNORENT, FOR THOSE ARE SPIRITS THAT WE MUST OVER COME IN OUR LIVES AND IN THIS WORLD.” She did not mention Cudi’s post about her firing.
In 2020, Kid Cudi told Esquire, while discussing his relationship with Kanye West amid that rapper’s public embrace of Trump, “I think he knows where I stand, and I think he doesn’t bring it up to me. We just don’t talk about it. I totally disagree with it; I think he knows that.”
Despite M.I.A.’s strong support of MAGA, the British rapper is not an American citizen and would not have been able to vote in the 2016, 2020, or 2024 elections. She was vocally anti-Trump before COVID, after which she began to express vaccine skepticism—even equating celebrity endorsements of its efficacy to Alex Jones’ spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre in 2022. She appeared on Jones’ Infowars to promote her clothing line two years later.
In 2024, M.I.A. endorsed Trump for president after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrew from the race. “RFK will inherit America when God is ready to replant and rebuild it righteously,” she wrote on social media at the time.
Fans who witnessed the Dallas event claim M.I.A. tried to soften the reaction to her comments in Dallas by telling the audience, “I’m illegal—half of my team aren’t here because they couldn’t get their visa.” She prefaced her next song, “This is for Mexico.”
Redditors report that the Saturday rant was not the rapper’s first since she kicked off the shows with Kid Cudi on April 28, but according to Cudi, it will be her last.
