Last month, Kid Cudi’s Rebel Ragers Tour took an unexpected turn when supporting act M.I.A. was removed from the lineup. Following performances that featured songs many audience members viewed as far-right or MAGA-leaning, M.I.A. faced boos from concertgoers and significant criticism online, leading Cudi to make a change.
Shortly afterward, Kid Cudi released a statement announcing that M.I.A. would no longer be participating in the tour. In response, the artist filed a lawsuit seeking $2.8 million in damages.
According to court documents obtained by Variety, M.I.A. and her legal team strongly dispute the circumstances surrounding her removal.
“Here is the truth. M.I.A. was terminated to generate publicity for the Tour, which has struggled with ticket sales,” the filing states. “She was contractually allowed to say whatever she wanted on stage. M.I.A. now holds Kid Cudi accountable for his bad faith destruction of her contractual rights, business opportunities, and reputation.”
Speaking with Popcast, M.I.A. claimed Kid Cudi never personally informed her that there were any issues leading up to her removal from the Rebel Ragers Tour.
“He didn’t call me. He didn’t talk to my crew,” she said. “I tried to speak with him, but he didn’t see me. It was honestly kind of crazy. Then my son called me and said, ‘Hey, I heard you’re not on the tour.’ I had just woken up the next morning. That’s how I found out.”
According to M.I.A., she was in another state when her son, who was at school, broke the news.
“My son called me from school and was like, ‘Oh, I guess you’re coming home,’” she recalled. “I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he sent me the post from Kid Cudi.”
Addressing the controversy surrounding her performances, M.I.A. explained that some audience members may have misunderstood what she was doing onstage.
“I think Cudi’s fans didn’t really know my songs,” she said. “I was skipping through tracks and only playing about ten seconds of each. When I got to ‘Illygirl,’ which is actually my favorite song, I thought, ‘I can’t do that one, but we can do ‘Teqkilla.’ So I played ‘Teqkilla,’ but I think people assumed we couldn’t play ‘Illygirl’ because of the lyrics. The irony is that the chorus of that song is literally saying I’m illegal.”
While M.I.A. acknowledged the backlash she received, she pushed back on the narrative that she was promoting a MAGA agenda.
“That’s the story the media ran with,” she said. “That became the perception that was created, amplified, and reinforced by algorithms until it became the accepted narrative. The reality is that I’m a brown immigrant woman, and regardless of what people in America think, that’s something they can never take away from me.”
Check out the clip of M.I.A. discussing her fallout with Kid Cudi below.
