Matty Healy has apologised to Ice Spice over a podcast interview in which he and the hosts mocked Chinese and Inuit people in relation to the rapper.
The 1975 frontman came under fire for comments he made during an episode of the Adam Friedland Show podcast in February.
At one point in the podcast, Healy mentioned US rapper Ice Spice, whom he claimed he tried to message on Instagram.
Healy, Friedland and comedian Nick Mullen then appeared to confuse her heritage by referring to her as Inuit and Chinese, imitating and mocking the accents of each.
Mullen called the American rapper an “Inuit Spice Girl” and a “chubby Chinese lady” .
As reported by Rolling Stone, Healy, 34, addressed the comments during a 1975 concert in New Zealand.
The musician and son of Denise Welch said that he doesn’t like being famous and that he “makes a joke out of everything” and “can take it too far sometimes in front of too many people”.
“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***. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry,” he said.
The Independent has contacted a representative of Ice Spice – real name Isis Naija Gaston, 23 – for comment.
Healy failed, however, to address wider criticism of the podcast appearance, during which he went on to encourage the hosts to do impressions of Japanese people working in concentration camps, later joining in himself.
The group also made a number of derogatory comments about women during the interview.
Within 15 minutes of the podcast beginning, Healy told Friedland that he would “f***” Friedland’s sister because “she’s hot”.
They also discussed Scots, a recognised indigenous language, which they appeared to confuse with the Scottish accent.
“Scots is its own language which is like retard English,” one of the hosts remarked, while Healey could be heard describing it as “mediaeval”.
At another point, while talking about a gambling website, one of the hosts joked that “they have child porn on the website”.
Healy responded: “Shout out!”
On Twitter, listeners branded the conversation “f***ing gross” and called out Healy for taking part.
Earlier this month, the podcast episode pulled from both Apple and Spotify. It is still available on YouTube.
His representatives did not respond to The Independent’s request about the podcast remarks.
