DaBaby has shared a lengthy response defending himself after he received backlash over comments made during his appearance at Rolling Loud Miami over the weekend.
“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,” the rapper can be heard saying in footage from the set shared on social media.
“Ladies, if your pussy smell like water, put your cellphone light up. Fellas, if you ain’t sucking dick in the parking lot, put your cellphone light up.”
DaBaby this is weird to say?? Wth. pic.twitter.com/MDBQEZ2NsA
— ➰ᴺᴹ (@KingSeanSwae) July 26, 2021
After many criticised the rapper’s statements as homophobic, he doubled down in his Instagram stories in a lengthy series of 19 videos.
“What I do at a live show is for the audience at the live show. It’ll never translate correctly to somebody looking at a little five, six-second clip from their goddamn crib on their phone. It just don’t work like that,” the rapper said.
“Because, regardless of what y’all motherfuckers are talking about and how the internet twisted up my motherfucking words, me and all my fans at the show, the gay ones and the straight ones, we turned the fuck up.
“I’m talking about my boy that was at the front of stage left where I jumped, ask him. He got clips all on his shit, the whole night was recording. We were turning up the whole night. My boy had the crop top on front row. He out there in that jungle, in that water. He out there cutting up. He knows the words to the song. I’m rapping them bitches with ’em.”
DaBaby went on to tell those who weren’t present at the show to “shut the fuck up”, adding, “Come fuck with the live show, killer, gay or straight.”
He repeated and addressed the comments made during his set, saying, “I wasn’t going on no rant. That’s called a call to action, that’s what that’s called. Because I’m a live performer. I’m the best live performer, and the live show killer. You interact with your fans, you get what I’m saying?
“All the lights went up, gay or straight. You want to know why? Because even my gay fans don’t got fucking AIDS… They don’t got AIDS. My gay fans, they take care of theyself, they ain’t going for that… They ain’t no junkies. I said if you ain’t sucking dick in the parking lot, put your cellphone light up. You know what my gay fans did? Put that motherfucking light up.
“My gay fans ain’t going for that. They got class. They ain’t sucking no dick in no parking lot,” he added. “Even my gay fans got standards.”
Concluding the video, DaBaby criticised those bringing “negative attention and energy”, once again saying the people criticising the rapper weren’t in attendance at the show and it didn’t concern them.
“Shut the fuck up. Don’t be disturbing my motherfucking gay fans and making them feel uncomfortable in they skin… Gay or straight, or goddamn both, or whatever. Don’t none of that shit matter to me. What matter to me, when I’m on that stage, is putting on the show for anybody and everybody that’s out there and that’s what the fuck I did.
T.I. went on to support DaBaby in a video posted on social media, equating the rapper’s comments during his set with Lil Nas X‘s openness about his sexuality in his music.
“For instance, the Lil Nas X shit. The performances and video, man I got a lot of respect for bruh because he had the courage to live his truth, but that shit ain’t for me… Just can’t look at it… And I don’t want my children seeing it, either,” he said.
He expanded on that comment later on in the video, saying, “If you have a Lil Nas X video, and him living his truth, you gone damn sure have people like DaBaby who are going to speak they truth. There ain’t nothing wrong with none of that. It ain’t got to be no hate, it’s all honesty.”