MIA has sued Kid Cudi after being axed as support on his ‘Rebel Ragers Tour’. He claimed he was sacking his support act because she made “offensive remarks” on-stage that upset his fanbase. But, in her new lawsuit, MIA claims her sacking was a publicity stunt motivated by poor ticket sales. And she wants Kid Cudi to compensate her for lost performance fees and merchandise sales.
“Here is the truth”, her legal filing with the courts in California declares. “MIA was terminated to generate publicity for the tour, which has struggled with ticket sales”. Sufficiently disappointing were those ticket sales that Kid Cudi was “forced to cancel a tour date”, the lawsuit adds, after which “he has ridiculed and attempted to ‘cancel’ MIA to market the tour and sell tickets”.
When announcing MIA was being pulled from his tour last month, Kid Cudi said he had been “flooded with messages from fans that were upset by her rants”. This was “very disappointing”, he added before confirming “I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase”.
At the time various clips of MIA performing on the ‘Rebel Ragers Tour’ emerged online seemingly showing the allegedly “offensive remarks”. MIA’s lawsuit also lists some of the political statements she made on-stage, including “free Palestine”, “do you want me to say fuck ICE?” and one exchange in which she alluded to the immigration status of some of the audience.
Explaining that she wasn’t performing her song ‘Illygirl’, she said “though some of you could be in the audience”, meaning some audience members were possibly illegal immigrants. She then went on, “alright, I am illegal. Half of my team are not here because they didn’t get the visa, okay? I want you to know that”.
She also commented on her previous controversial support for Donald Trump, saying, “I’ve been cancelled for many things, I never thought I’d be cancelled for being a Republican voting American. So, I’ve come to meet you all in person. This is the ‘allow me to reintroduce myself’ tour”.
While Kid Cudi didn’t state which of these remarks prompted MIA’s axing, he did say, “I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started the tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows ... and I was assured things were understood”.
MIA’s lawsuit denies that claim. She says that her contract with the tour’s promoter, Live Nation, gave her own company Neet Touring “exclusive creative control over the production and presentation of MIA’s performance”. So, there were no contractual restrictions on what she said on stage.
And Kid Cudi knew exactly what he was getting when he invited MIA to join his tour. She is, after all, her lawsuit says, a “politically fearless musician”. Kid Cudi “knew her politics, he knew her music, he knew she would not stay silent on stage”, and yet, “he invited her anyways”. Hence the theory that Kid Cudi actually axed MIA as a publicity stunt in the wake of disappointing ticket sales.
MIA’s lawsuit says that, as a result of being sacked from the tour, Live Nation has not paid the full $2,805,000 guarantee that was agreed in her contract, plus she has lost profit from the merch sales that would have happened on the tour.
And that’s not all. “An offer for MIA to perform at a private party for over $290,000 plus travel and accommodation was withdrawn. An offer for a merchandise pop up in Los Angeles was rescinded. Discussions with a sync company over a potential licensing deal were terminated. MIA and her son have received death threats”.
As a result, she wants the court to order Kid Cudi to pay her compensatory, consequential and punitive damages, to respectively cover lost income from the tour itself, and from the other deals that fell through as a result of her axing, and to punish Kid Cudi’s conduct.
