Ice Spice has received an apology from The 1975 pop band frontman Matty Healy after he made reproachful remarks about the star following an Elle interview.
In the feature story, Ice Spice said that she was a huge fan of alternative music – different than the drill genre she has been known to record. Weeks later, Healy would appear on The Adam Friedland Show, where he made insulting comments about the rapper’s body, then mocked Chinese and Hawaiian accents while questioning her ethnicity.
Months later, he apologized to the star.
“I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you,” Healy said while onstage in New Zealand. “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*ck. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”
Following the derogatory remarks, Apple and Spotify pulled the podcast episode from their platforms. In the episode, Healy said that he once DM’d Ice Spice, referring to her as “this chubby Chinese lady. ‘Yeah, I rap and [make] music.’ Do they talk like that? Do Inuits talk like that?” He and the host then proceeded to mock Chinese and Hawaiian accents.
The show’s hosts then asked him “So you slide into her DMs and ask ‘What are you? A fucking Eskimo or something?’”
“The truth is, I see a sign that says like, ‘Matty, I hope you’re okay.’ I feel a bit bad, to be honest, because I feel like I’ve been a bit irresponsible,” he said in his New Zealand appearance. “It’s very well for me to say, I don’t understand how famous I am. I don’t like being famous. But reality is reality. And I think that I’ve said some things or kind of, I make a joke out of everything. That’s my thing. And I can take it too far sometimes in front of too many people. And I feel a bit embarrassed. So that’s the truth.”
In a scathing Rolling Stone article, journalist Larisha Paul said that his apology appeared inauthentic, but she isn’t surprised one bit.
“Self-awareness has long rested at the center of The 1975’s public perception, which is helmed almost solely by Healy,” Paul wrote. “Their music is his search for a way to be sincere while also keeping up with a bit. It’s his way of providing social commentary on the digital age and societal shifts. So it makes sense that even his apology to someone else would also be about him. He isn’t sorry that he participated in racially-motivated and body-shaming conversations about a successful woman 11 years younger than him — he’s sorry that it made him look bad, pulling back the curtain on the type of missteps his fans are used to forgiving.”
