Matty Healy claims he ‘baited’ fans with Ice Spice ethnicity controversy

Matty Healy addressed the backlash that he has been receiving over his controversial interview in which he allegedly ridiculed the ethnicity of rapper Ice Spice.

The 1975 frontman, who had appeared on Adam Friedland’s podcast in February this year, explained what went down when he laughed along when the co-hosts called Ice Spice racist slurs like, “Inuit Spice Girl,” “This chubby Chinese lady,” and did mocking accents.

In an interview with The New Yorker, the musician detailed the incident, telling the outlet that he “wanted to do something that felt more like simply talking with his friends” after he had been doing so many promos.

After the episode went up, outraged headlines and furious tweets surfaced accusing him of “mocking toxic masculinity” during his shows and then being ignorant on a podcast for making such comments.

Although, he implied that that he was “baiting” his fans on purpose to rile them.

“A little bit,” he told the outlet. “But it doesn’t actually matter. Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen.”

The interviewer argued that maybe it does matter.

To that, Healy responded, “If it does, you’re either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt.”

“It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am,'” he continued. “And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level.

“I’m not trying to make myself famous,” he added. “I want to be known for what I do. But now fame is about being known for who you are. And people are complicated. If people are going to make me this famous, I’m going to make people work for it.”