DaBaby’s new music video is doing nothing to change minds following comments he made at a music festival last weekend that have been blasted as misinformed and homophobic.
DaBaby’s “Giving What It’s Supposed To Give” video ends with “Don’t Fight Hate With Hate” in the colours of the LGBT rainbow flag, followed by “My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.”
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, DaBaby said he shot the video only hours before getting on a jet to fly to Rolling Loud in Miami Gardens, Florida and was releasing it to “show the world once again that you CAN’T BE F**KED WIT.”
The track includes the line: “B**ch, we like AIDS / I’m on your a** / We on your a**, b**ch / We won’t go away.”
During his Rolling Loud set, the rapper 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.”
The following day, DaBaby addressed growing criticism of his comments by suggesting that his gay fans are too good to expose themselves to HIV. “They got class,” he said. “They ain’t sucking no d**k in no parking lot.”
On Tuesday night, DaBaby took a different tone. "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.”
Dua Lipa and Elton John were among those publicly calling DaBaby out, with the latter saying: “This fuels stigma and discrimination and is the opposite of what our world needs to fight the AIDS epidemic.”
In his Instagram post on Wednesday, DaBaby again addressed the Rolling Loud backlash. “Things deemed ‘insensitive’ said during your performance even though you’re an ENTERTAINER, try to apologize and explain that you meant no harm & that you were only entertaining as you are paid to do, & have no problem with anyone’s sexual preference that is outside of yours, only to have a substantial amount of people refuse to understand your logic, tag along with a trending topic & play with your character and do everything they can to take money out of your pockets and food out your kids mouth, and have everybody around you panicking only for you to apologize anyway stand on the fact that you were entertaining and truly didn’t mean to offend anybody or start no commotion, although they’re currently offending you…”