The 1975's Matty Healy on Slowthai: "We need to look after young men a bit better before we start demonising them"

The 1975‘s Matty Healy has spoken out after a sample of his voice at the NME Awards 2020 was used in Slowthai‘s recent track ‘Enemy’.

The song, which arrived earlier this month, opens with a sample of Healy addressing the audience after Slowthai’s appearance at the event was marred in controversy.

“Everyone, send your thoughts to Slowthai,” Healy can be heard saying. “Fuck knows where he is, but god bless the boy.”

Later in the track a female voice declares: “Slowthai, you have officially been cancelled. C**t.”

Speaking to NME for this week’s Big Read, Healy explained how the Northampton rapper had contacted him to approve the sample.

He said: “I just got a FaceTime from Ty and he’s like, ‘Let me play you this! Let me play you this!’ And you know, Ty is actually a really sweet boy and a smart guy.

• READ MORE: The 1975: “I just hope that my honesty is not seen as self-indulgent”

“He was just like, ‘Do you reckon this is cool? Is this alright? I’m not taking the piss or anything.’ I was like, ‘No, I know you’re not, it was part of the moment, I get it and to be honest with you I’m quite into it.’”

The track itself sees Slowthai addressing his actions at the ceremony, after an interaction with co-host Katherine Ryan escalated to what he later called “a point of shameful actions on my part.”

He left the event early after an altercation with an audience member, who accused him of misogyny while accepting the fan-voted Hero Of The Year Award.

In the same interview, Healy also described Slowthai as “naive” and said he needed to be looked after a “bit better”.

He said: “I think that to demonise him when… we as a society love living through people like Slowthai. We love celebrating young people who are economically disenfranchised who are kind of anti-establishment who are doing these things, and they’re reckless and they’re wild. And we basically go, ‘Yeah, fucking go on! Yeah, do it for me! Say that thing for me! Do that thing for me!’ And then when it goes too far, we’re all a bit like, ‘Whoa.’

“But we’ve got this guy and we celebrate them, we put them in pantheons and then when they reveal themselves to be young and naive at times, we go, ‘Well, that’s not fucking good enough.’ It’s a bit like, it’s all part of an issue, you know? We need to be looking after young men a bit better before we start demonising them”.

Today sees The 1975 release their fourth album, ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’.