The 1975 is a band you completely forget exists until you hear one of their songs on the radio. Best known for songs such as "Sex", "Chocolate", and "Robbers", the British band has been incredibly successful domestically. All five of their albums have topped the British charts, and all but their debut album reached the top 10 in the US. Their latest album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language, reached #7 on the Billboard charts.
However, the band was in the news earlier this year for a completely different reason. Appearing on The Adam Friedland Show, lead singer Matty Healy made a number of much-decried remarks. Specifically, he talked about trying to DM slide Ice Spice on Instagram. The podcast episode then devolved into an offensive guessing game about the rapper's racial heritage, with hosts Adam Friedland and Nick Mullen adopting offensive stereotypical accents with each guess. The hosts also body-shamed Ice Spice, at one point referring to her as "this chubby Chinese lady." Healy did not participate in the accents but was heard laughing in reaction to them.
Healy Stops Concert To Ramble About Ice Spice
Healy was subject to a lot of backlash after the episode premiered. Yungblood called out Healy, Friedman, and Mullen for "objectifying a young Black female artist." Meanwhile, the overall racism of the segment was widely criticized. Aside from the racist accents, Spice does not belong to any of the ethnicities the hosts brought up. By her own account, Spice is of Nigerian and Dominican heritage. On the podcast, "Inuit", "Chinese", and "Hawaiian" were all suggested.
However, Healy took a break during an April 21 concert in Auckland, New Zealand to address the situation.
“I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you. 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 dick. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.
I don’t want anything like that misconstrued to be mean. I’m not… I hate… I don’t mind being a bit of a joker. […] It’s OK for me to be, like, a trickster or whatever, but I don’t want to be perceived as, like, being barmy. Because honestly, I just love you guys, and I love doing this. […]
The truth I just want to say, ‘Hello. This is a bit embarrassing. I’m sorry if I get it wrong. We all get it wrong,’ you know? I just have to do it in public and then apologize to Ice Spice. My life’s just a bit weird. I am genuinely sorry if I’ve upset her because I f*cking love her.
Matty Healy, April 21 2023
As noted in a report from Rolling Stone, the apology left a lot to be desired. Healy doesn't actually apologize for the comments and jokes he enabled, he's just sorry if he upset the 23-year-old whose DMs he was trying to get into. For the record, Matty Healy is 34. Overall, Healy's apology was a blanket statement of regret if he had ever gone beyond "being a bit of a joker". Healy also did not directly apologize to Spice, instead apologizing to a concert audience in New Zealand. Ice Spice is yet to respond to the apology but if she does, we'll update you here on HotNewHipHop.
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