DaBaby Responds After Being Kicked Off Two Festival Line-Ups Over Homophobic Comments
"Love to all. God bless."
The rapper DaBaby is continuing to experience fallout after making a series of homophobic comments at a recent live show.
During the Miami performance, the ‘Suge’ singer invited the audience to “put your cell phone light up” unless they were a gay man who “sucked dick in the parking lot,” or had “showed up with HIV/AIDS … that will make you die in two, three weeks.”
The comments were met with immediate and widespread disapproval, with DaBaby’s one-time collaborator Dua Lipa issuing a statement. “We need to come together to fight the stigma and ignorance around HIV/AIDS,” Dua Lipa wrote, saying she was “surprised and horrified” by the actions of DaBaby.
Days later, Elton John also issued a statement. “This fuels stigma and discrimination and is the opposite of what our world needs to fight the AIDS epidemic,” he wrote on Twitter.
In response, DaBaby issued a guarded apology on Twitter, apologising for “upset” rather than his actual words. “Anybody who done ever been affected by AIDS/HIV y’all got the right to be upset, what I said was insensitive even though I have no intentions on offending anybody,” read the short Tweet. “So my apologies.”
Yet such meagre words did nothing to stem the fallout. Lollapalooza and the Governors Ball festivals dropped the rapper, as did Day N Vegas.
In response, DaBaby has refined his apology, delivering a more substantial but no less guarded statement. “Social media moves so fast that people want to demolish you before you even have the opportunity to grow, educate, and learn from your mistakes,” the rapper wrote. “I appreciate the many people who came to me with kindness, who reached out to me privately to offer wisdom, education, and resources. That’s what I needed and it was received.”
As for the actual apology itself, rather than an explanation of context, DaBaby says he wants to “apologise to the LGBTQ+ community for the hurtful and triggering comments I made.
“I apologise for my misinformed comments about HIV/AIDS and I know education on this is important. Love to all. God bless.”
DaBaby releases a second apology to the LGBTQ+ community over his homophobic remarks: https://t.co/IOBKd7hZEP pic.twitter.com/3mSBCGu3PY
— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) August 2, 2021
It’s unlikely that the festivals that have dropped DaBaby will take him back after this second apology. But at the very least, it does show a willingness to grow — something absent from the first statement.