The 1975’s Matthew Healy has apologized to Ice Spice for his derogatory feedback on the Adam Friedland Present podcast in February, Rolling Stone stories. Talking at a 1975 live performance in New Zealand, Healy acknowledged that he “can take it too far typically in entrance of too many individuals” and stated, “I don’t need Ice Spice to assume I’m a dick. I really like you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.” However he failed to deal with wider criticism of the podcast look.
Healy has been below hearth because the podcast aired in February. Through the present, Healy admitted to sending an unreturned direct message to Ice Spice. Consequently, Healy and Adam Friedland defined to co-host Nick Mullen who Ice Spice is, which led to Mullen calling the rapper an “Inuit Spice Woman” and a “chubby Chinese language woman” earlier than he and Friedland imitated her imagined accent, primarily based on their notion of her racial background. Healy egged on the hosts as they imitated Chinese language and Hawaiian accents. Later within the podcast, Healy laughed as Friedland and Mullen imitated Japanese accents.
The three of them additionally made chauvinistic jokes about girls all through the podcast, and did a section on how the LGBTQ+ group perceives queerbaiting. Healy stated it was not offensive to “the gays” however to “younger women who assume it’s a brand new factor.” When one of many hosts joked that homosexual males take pleasure in being queerbaited, Healy gently backtracked, saying, “Perhaps it’s not all of the homosexual guys, however it’s plenty of them.” In the remainder of the podcast, he gave little if any pushback in opposition to offensive remarks, and joked, “Yeah, that’s what Ice Spice is like,” when the hosts mocked the rapper’s imagined accent.
After the episode aired, ESEA Music, a United Kingdom–primarily based society of East and Southeast Asian individuals working in music, issued an announcement condemning Healy’s “flagrant racism and complicity in laughing alongside at dangerous Asian tropes.” In addition to summarizing the podcast’s content material, the assertion drew consideration to Healy’s place, on the time, as a director at Soiled Hit Ltd., the corporate that owns the 1975’s label dwelling, Soiled Hit. The label has signed a number of artists of Asian descent, together with Rina Sawayama, Saya Grey, Wallice (who’s at present supporting the 1975), No Rome, and Beabadoobee, the assertion famous. Sawayama commented on the submit, “what the precise fuck.”
Talking to the gang in Auckland, Healy prevented reference to different contentious parts from the podcast, however stated his “joking obtained misconstrued.” He added, “I simply really feel a bit unhealthy, and I’m form of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you. Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not as a result of I’m aggravated that me joking obtained misconstrued. It’s as a result of I don’t need Ice Spice to assume I’m a dick. I really like you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”