A British rapper known as M.I.A. lost her gig at the 2-day U.K. music festival in August called Field Day following her appearance on the Candace Owens podcast on The Daily Wire.
The 47-year-old singer, born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam MBE, appeared with Owens in a November 1 video. During the show, Owens said M.I.A. has been described by legacy media as an “anti-vaxxer,” “a terrorist sympathizer,” and “an out of touch elitist who’s suffering from terminal foot-in-mouth syndrome.”
On January 10, the rapper tweeted a message she said was from the festival informing her that she had been removed from the event over her “online comments,” which “could be viewed as being quite contentious.” The message said that her remarks would make it “very hard” for the festival to continue with her following an offer to perform sent on October 27.
“After discussing it with AEG, the consensus is that in light of the online activity, we cannot continue with the offer,” the message to M.I.A. added. “We have not taken the decision lightly, but we must consider the wide risks to the festival and its stakeholders.”
M.I.A. tweeted in response to the message, “‘In light of her online activity’ like what accidentally launching a missile on an innocent village, or me scamming a billions of dollars [sic] from people or running a sex scandal? No it was your lil tweet. How Naughty. Festival stakeholders want musicians to be boring Puppets.”
“In light of her online activity”like what accidentally launching a missile on a innocent village, or me scamming a billions of dollars from people or running a sex scandal?
No it was your lil tweet. How Naughty.
Festival stakeholders want musicians to be boring Puppets. pic.twitter.com/KWQJre7DEG
— M.I.A. (@MIAuniverse) January 11, 2023
During the artist’s appearance in November, she and Owens discussed the singer’s childhood experiences growing up in Sri Lanka as one of the Tamil minority in that country. M.I.A. told Candace about an incident in 2009 when tens of thousands of Tamils were forced onto a beach and bombed — and event known as the Mullivaikkal Massacre.
The rapper labeled the actions against the group war crimes, which Owens noted no one wanted the singer to talk about at the time.
“They wanted me to be like, ‘I came from a mud hut, like me now, you know, I’m driving a Bentley, and I’m so happy I’m liberated,’” the U.K. rapper shared. “And that was the narrative Hollywood wanted me to say.”
“But money didn’t mean s***, you know, when 150,000 people are getting bombed, and you can’t speak about it,” she added. “And if you have to compromise that to achieve this status, it just wasn’t worth it, you know, in a larger scale, not just talking about myself and my experience, on a larger scale this level of censorship or gaslighting, I would say it induces mental illness in people, which I think is why it’s been going up in society because it’s so, it’s so difficult.”
“Because on the one hand, 99% of the people would have shut up and took the the Bentley route, you know, and become the billionaire,” the artist continued. “And would have found it quite easy to make that compromise, you know, but for me, obviously, I have a very political dad and my family come from that, you know. So it was just not — it was just not an option not to talk about it, because it’s ingrained in the DNA of my music.”
“So if you had simply forgotten who you were, you could have become someone else,” Owens replied.
At the time of this publication, there has been no further comment from the festival.