The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has broken his silence regarding his controversial comments about Ice Spice.
The British singer received backlash after appearing on The Adam Friedland Show podcast in February. During the episode, host Friedland and producer Nick Mullen debated the rapper’s ethnicity with racist remarks. The two even began mocking the artist using a variety of accents, calling her an “Inuit Spice Girl” and a “chubby Chinese lady.”
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Healy did not join in but laughed along. The podcast episode has since been deleted from Apple and Spotify. The vocalist, 34, recently spoke with The New Yorker to address the issue and appears unbothered, believing the controversy “doesn’t actually matter.”
“Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy,’” he told the publication. “That doesn’t happen.’”
He continued to acknowledge the fans that are offended and upset by his actions.
“You’re either deluded, or you are, sorry, a liar,” he pointed out. “You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt. It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.’ And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level.”
Although Healy pushed the discriminatory remarks under the rug, he reportedly apologized to Ice Spice at a previous show in Auckland, New Zealand.
“I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you,” said Healy, according to Billboard. “Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a d–k. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry. I don’t want it to be misconstrued as mean. I don’t mind being a bit of a joker… but I am genuinely sorry if I’ve upset them because I f–king love them.”
The rapper recently released a new rendition of “Karma” with Taylor Swift. Ice Spice joined Swift on stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey last weekend to perform the song.
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