M.I.A. Compared to Kanye West Amid Photo With Candace Owens

M.I.A. has been compared to fellow musician Kanye West, after she shared a photo of herself posing with right-wing commentator Candace Owens.

Amid Halloween celebrations, M.I.A., whose real name is Maya Arulpragasam, took to Twitter to share a photo of herself posing alongside Owens, 33, on Sunday.

Captioning the image, which showed the pair smiling while posing before what appeared to be a London skyline, the "Paper Planes" hitmaker, 47, wrote: "Here's a scary picture for halloween," adding a heart emoji and the hashtag "#Freespeech."

The post drew a strong reaction from social media users, a number of whom compared M.I.A. to beleaguered rapper West, who has seen his net worth plummet in the past week amid the fallout over his antisemitism scandal.

West's month of controversy began at his October 3 Yeezy fashion show in Paris. He appeared alongside Owens wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words "White Lives Matter," a slogan commonly used by white supremacists as well as opponents of the Black Lives Matter movement.

After being temporarily locked out of his Instagram and Twitter accounts over posting antisemitic comments on both platforms, West went on to make similar remarks in subsequent interviews, prompting a number of businesses to cut ties with him.

He was also hit with a $250 million lawsuit by the mother of George Floyd's youngest child, after the rapper said he had died from a fentanyl overdose and not asphyxiation, which medical experts determined was the cause of death.

During an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, West discussed Owens' new documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM, before alleging of Floyd: "They hit him with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy's knee wasn't even on his neck like that," West said on the podcast.

Attorneys for Washington subsequently announced that they were working to file a $250 million lawsuit for "misappropriation, defamation and infliction of emotional distress" against West.

On Friday, West apologized to the Black community for his comments about Floyd, adding that he knows "how it feels to have a knee on my neck now."

With West having also lost his lucrative deal with Adidas amid the controversy, Forbes has reported that the end of the business relationship caused Ye's net worth to plummet from $2 billion to a comparatively humble $400 million.

A number of Twitter users predicted that British-Sri Lankan musician M.I.A. could face a similar fate after sharing a photo posing with Owens.

Author Dan Ozzi wrote on the micro-blogging platform that "being photographed with Candace Owens is like watching the videotape in The Ring. Your music career will be dead within one week. Anyway so long MIA thank u for everything."

"MIA trying to go down the Kanye route without one tenth of the devoted fanbase is a hilarious sight," commented another Twitter user.

"Associating with Candace did so much for Kanye's career trajectory, any sane artist would do the same," another quipped.

"It's kinda ironic that the one who made the 'Born Free' music video is now posing with someone who wore a White Lives Matter shirt," said another.

Meanwhile, Brick Magazine writer Atoosa Moinzadeh tweeted that it "is becoming more prominent in the celebrity class and it's all right wing and sympathetic to fascism. Y'all are not our saviors. We don't care what you have to say. Please shut the f*** up and leave us all alone."

While M.I.A. and Owens posing together may come as a surprise to some, it was several days in the making, after the two connected on Twitter.

On October 13, M.I.A. railed against the coronavirus vaccine on Twitter, writing: "If Alex jones pays for lying shouldn't every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too?"

Earlier that day, Jones had been ordered to pay the families of Sandy Hook victims almost $1 billion in damages. The Infowars founder had long promoted lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, falsely claiming that the massacre had been a "false flag" operation.

Owens, who has also been critical of the COVID vaccine, reached out to M.I.A. on October 16, writing in response to one of the musician's tweets that she would "like to have you in my show @MIAuniverse. If that is at all a possibility please reach out. DM's are open."

"I'll be happy to share my opinions and experiences," M.I.A. responded that day.

M.I.A., who is known for being outspoken, has also tweeted in defense of West amid his controversies, writing in response to an article about the lawsuit over his Floyd comments that she hopes he sues "everyone who called him crazy."

A release date for Owens' M.I.A. interview hasn't yet been announced.