Kid Cudi Dropped M.I.A. From His Tour. She Says People Misunderstood Her.
On May 2, M.I.A. opened for Kid Cudi at the Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas. Within hours, what happened on stage had people online taking sides.
She told the crowd, “I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter.” Then she said she couldn’t perform her song “Illegal” because “there’s probably one in the audience.” The crowd started booing right away.
M.I.A. tried to explain herself on stage: “I’m illegal. Half of my team aren’t here because they didn’t get their visas. I want you to know that. Don’t listen to what the bots say on the internet.”
That didn’t change things. Two days later, Kid Cudi posted on 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, 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. I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase.”
Ontario Just Capped Ticket Resale Prices. Did Fans Win, or Did Ticketmaster?
M.I.A. replied in all caps on X: “I wrote ‘Borders,’ ‘Illegal,’ and ‘Paper Planes’ before you thought immigrant rights were cool. 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.”
The real issue is that M.I.A. has spent years talking about borders, migration, and identity before most people did. Songs like “Paper Planes” and “Borders” are about the same topics she mentioned on stage. But in recent years, she has also supported anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, sold anti-5G clothing through Alex Jones’ site, and backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election. That background matters, even if her stage comments were misunderstood.
Kid Cudi also has the right to decide what happens on his tour. But removing someone for political comments at a music show, especially when their work is political, raises tough questions about where an artist’s control ends and censorship startsThe stage has never been a neutral place. The real question is who gets to decide what can be said there.re.
Did Kid Cudi have the right to remove her, or was it censorship?
