A week after making misinformed and homophobic comments at a Florida music festival, DaBaby was dropped as one of Sunday’s headline acts at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
Festival organizers tweeted: “Lollapalooza was founded on diversity, inclusivity, respect, and love. With that in mind, DaBaby will no longer be performing at Grant Park tonight.”
The rapper was replaced by Young Thug, who was previously scheduled to perform earlier in the day.
During his set at Rolling Loud in Miami Gardens on July 25, DaBaby told the crowd: “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS – any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that’ll make you die in two or three weeks – put your cellphone light up … Fellas, if you ain’t sucking n***a d**k in the parking lot, put your cellphone light up.”
Faced with criticism on social media, the rapper went on Instagram to declare that his gay fans “got class” and “ain’t sucking no d**k in no parking lot.”
Among those slamming DaBaby for his comments were Madonna, Elton John and Dua Lipa.
“If you’re going to make hateful remarks to the LGBTQ+ community about HIV/AIDS then know your facts,” Madonna wrote in an Instagram post. “People like you are the reason we are still living in a world divided by fear.”
John wrote: “This fuels stigma and discrimination and is the opposite of what our world needs to fight the AIDS epidemic.”
Lipa, who featured DaBaby on her hit “Levitating,” said she was “surprised and horrified” by his words and did not “recognize this as the person I worked with.”
Last Tuesday, DaBaby followed up with: “Anybody who done ever been effected 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. So my apologies.”
But, the next day, he released a music video for a track that includes the line: “B**ch, we like AIDS / I’m on your a** / We on your a**, b**ch / We won’t go away.”
The video ends with “Don’t Fight Hate With Hate” in the colours of the LGBT rainbow flag, and “My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.”