Taylor Swift revealed on Wednesday that hit-making rapper Ice Spice will be featured on a remixed version of Karma, one of the songs from her latest album, Midnights.
Her announcement comes in the midst of ongoing conversations around Taylor’s rumoured relationship with Matty Healy of the band The 1975, whose history of problematic comments and actions includes laughing along at racist jokes about Ice Spice on a podcast.
In January, Matty appeared on an episode of the podcast The Adam Friedland Show, in which the host and his co-presenter Nick Mullen made racist remarks about Ice Spice, referring to her as “Inuit Spice Girl” and “this chubby Chinese lady”.
The frontman was heard laughing along as the two co-hosts continued to mock Chinese and Hawaiian accents.
The podcast was pulled from Spotify and Apple. In April, Matty apologised publicly to Ice Spice during one of his concerts in Auckland, New Zealand.
“I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you,” he said, as reported by Rolling Stone.
“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 dick. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”
Although Ice Spice never responded to Matty, on Wednesday, the rapper tweeted about her collaboration with Taylor, calling her Grammy winner the “sweetest person ever”.
In early April, The Sun reported that Taylor and Matty were dating, and the 1975 musician was later seen supporting his rumoured girlfriend during several stops of her current stadium tour.
Taylor told a crowd in Massachusetts last week that she’s “never been this happy in my life, in all aspects of my, life ever. And I just want to thank you for being a part of that”.