Organizers of London festival AFROPUNK have announced that M.I.A. will no longer be the headlining act for the show due to take place in September.
On Friday, the festival organizers put up a message on their website announcing the news after M.I.A. made some controversial comments about the Black Lives Matters movement:
‘After announcing the situation with the artist and the community, a decision was agreed upon by all involved that M.I.A. will no longer headline AFROPUNK London.’
M.I.A. was vocal about the BLM movement earlier this year. Speaking to London’s Evening Standard, in April. She said the following:
‘It’s interesting that in America the problem you’re allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter,” she told the magazine. “It’s not a new thing to me — it’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s.’
In addition to this, M.I.A. expressed frustration over her belief that other political problems across the globe were not getting the same backing.
‘Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? That’s a more interesting question. And you cannot ask it on a song that’s on Apple, you cannot ask it on an American TV programme, you cannot create that tag on Twitter, Michelle Obama is not going to hump you back.’
Initially, the organizers at AFROPUNK had defended their headline choice and her comments in a previous statement they released last month:
‘The debate is healthy and as people who have long been silenced, we refuse to participate in silencing of other voices.’
But now it seems that those at AFROPUNK has gone back on their message as M.I.A. has received further backlash for her comments.
The UK rapper is yet to publicly react to the news.
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