The Host Of The Podcast Where Matty Healy Made Racist Comments About Ice Spice Just Took Credit For Her Taylor Swift Collab And People Have Thoughts

Last week, Taylor Swift announced that she had collaborated with American rapper Ice Spice for a new version of her 2022 song “Karma.”

“I’m a massive fan of this brilliant artist and after getting to know her I can confirm: she is THE ONE to watch,” she wrote at the time.

Twitter: @taylorswift13

Explaining how the collab came to be, Taylor added that Ice Spice’s team had approached her because the up-and-coming star has been a fan of Taylor’s since she was a child.

But as wholesome as the situation may seem on the surface, there is a darker context to this collaboration that rubbed many up the wrong way.

In fact, immediately after it was announced, Taylor was accused of using Ice Spice to distract from the growing backlash surrounding her rumored relationship with Matty Healy.

In case you missed it, just weeks after it was revealed that Taylor had split from her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, she was reported to be “madly in love” with The 1975’s lead singer, Matty.

The two have known each other since 2014, and even though Matty previously insisted that it’d be “emasculating” to date Taylor, they have done little to dispel the speculation.

In addition to attending several of her recent concert dates in a VIP tent with her best friends and family, Matty has performed on stage alongside Taylor’s opening act, Phoebe Bridgers.

He and Taylor were also pictured holding hands before they were spotted kissing, and the two were filmed leaving a party together as well as him entering her New York home.

But the apparent new romance has not been well received by Taylor’s fans, who are hugely disappointed by her association with Matty thanks to his long history of problematic behavior.

Over the years, the British singer has made a series of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and racist comments, and in January of this year he was filmed seemingly doing a Nazi salute on stage.

Twitter: @waystarnatco

In February, Matty faced fierce backlash when he appeared on The Adam Friedland Show podcast and he and the hosts made such harmful remarks that Spotify and Apple Music removed the episode from their platforms.

At one point in the conversation, Matty casually admitted to masturbating to Black women being “brutalized” on a hardcore “abuse porn” website, and he also encouraged the other two men to do racist impersonations of a Japanese person working in a concentration camp.

Twitter: @beyisover

Matty, Adam Friedland, and Nick Mullen also made racist remarks about Ice Spice. The three men were recorded laughing as they mocked Hawaiian and Chinese accents while referring to the rapper as “one of the Inuit Spice Girls,” a “chubby Chinese lady,” and “a fucking Eskimo.”

To her fans’ disappointment, Taylor has not acknowledged any of the concerns surrounding Matty. In fact, at her Massachusetts concert last weekend she appeared to actively dismiss the scrutiny as she pointedly told the crowd: “I've just never been this happy in my life in all aspects of my life ever before.”

As a result, Taylor has been branded “another complicit white woman,” and fans have canceled their preorders for her upcoming album and sold their tickets to her tour.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that when Taylor announced a collab with the same rapper that her rumored boyfriend had made racist jibes about just three months ago, many questioned her intentions.

Taylor was called “insidiously calculated” as the discourse erupted online, with one person tweeting: “Calculated afffff instead of addressing it straight-on, it’s, ‘Lemme collab to show that the racism was okay bcz look Ice Spice is collabing w/me!’ Atrocious behaviour.”

Twitter: @tishas_tweets

Another pointed out that this was the first time that Taylor had ever collaborated with a Black woman in her 17-year career as they called the timing “telling.”

Twitter: @ultravioletssss

Others shared their disgust at Taylor “finding a way to profit” from Ice Spice amid Matty’s remarks, calling it “a text book example of white woman feminism. It’s convenient, manipulative and continues to shield and protect white men.”

Twitter: @undercoverARMY4

A TikToker went so far as to theorize that self-proclaimed “mastermind” Taylor had pre-empted the backlash that she and Matty would face, so set the wheels into motion for the Ice Spice collab as a “pre planned redemption arc.”

And Adam — the host of the podcast where the comments about Ice Spice were made — appears to agree.

Fueling speculation that the only reason Taylor collaborated with Ice Spice is because of Matty’s appearance on his podcast, Adam retweeted an account reporting on the collab and simply added: “You’re welcome”.

Twitter: @AdamFriedland

Commenting on a TikTok video about Adam’s tweet, one person wrote: “whoaaa so adam is verifying that this is damage control on her part.”

“ppls masks are slipping and it’s never been so obvious,” one more added in agreement.

“And people say taylor didn't do this for PR…” another tweeted.

Twitter: @Julia44704393

Matty issued a “kind of” apology to Ice Spice for the comments that he made on the podcast during a concert last month, saying: “I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you,” before insisting that his “joking got misconstrued.”

However, he has since had a change of heart, and in a new interview with the New Yorker he said that anyone who is “hurt” by what he said is “either deluded” or “a liar.”

He defiantly added: “You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt.”

The publication also reported that Matty chose to appear on The Adam Friedland Show because “he wanted to do something that felt more like simply talking with his friends” in lieu of traditional interviews.

More on this

• Matty Healy’s Response To That Podcast Backlash Has Sparked Even More Backlash After He Dismissed The People Who Are Hurt As “Deluded” Or “A Bit Mental”Stephanie Soteriou · May 30, 2023

• Taylor Swift’s Collaboration With Ice Spice Has Been Called “Insidiously Calculated” And A “Blatant Distraction” After Matty Healy Made Racist Comments About The RapperStephanie Soteriou · May 25, 2023

• Taylor Swift Has Been Branded Another “Complicit White Woman” After Matty Healy Admitted To Masturbating To Hardcore Pornography That Degrades And Humiliates Black Women Just Three Months AgoStephanie Soteriou · May 15, 2023

• Taylor Swift Fans Are Disappointed By Her Involvement With Matty Healy After He Was Accused Of Doing The Nazi Salute And Said It’d Be “Emasculating” To Date HerStephanie Soteriou · May 9, 2023