Lollapalooza drops DaBaby over homophobic remarks, replaces him with Young Thug
The Chicago-based music festival made the announcement on Sunday, just hours before DaBaby was scheduled to perform
Music News Lollapalooza
Despite concerns about COVID, Lollapalooza is still rolling on this weekend in Chicago. The annual music festival was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, but returned on July 29 to reign over Grant Park with porous safety restrictions and acts like Jack Harlow, Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, and Limp Bizkit (along with a white-haired Fred Durst). On Sunday, just hours before DaBaby was to perform, the festival announced via Twitter that he would be replaced with Young Thug.
The announcement reads in full:
Lollapalooza was founded on diversity, inclusivity, respect, and love. With that in mind, DaBaby will no longer be performing at Grant Park tonight. Young Thug will now perform at 9:00pm on the Bud Light Seltzer Stage, and G Herbo will perform at 4:00pm on the T-Mobile Stage.
Let’s back up a bit. In July 25, while performing at Rolling Loud Miami, DaBaby decided to say a bunch of homophobic things, like “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, or any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that’ll make you die in two to three weeks, then put your cellphone lighter up.” After a video of his remarks went viral on Twitter, the Blame It On Baby rapper defended himself via a multi-part Instagram story, telling any of his critics who weren’t in attendance to “shut the fuck up.” But fellow artists like Questlove called out his bigoted remarks, while Elton John and Madonna combatted DaBaby’s blatantly inaccurate statements about living with HIV/AIDS.
Dua Lipa, who collaborated with DaBaby on a remix of “Levitating,” said in her own IG Story that she was “surprised and horrified at DaBaby’s comments.” The Future Nostalgia performer went on: “I really don’t recognise this as the person I worked with. I know my fans know where my heart lies and that I stand 100% with the LGBTQ community. We need to come together to fight the stigma and ignorance around HIV/AIDS.” On July 28, DaBaby dropped a new music video for “Giving What It’s Supposed to Give,” which ends with the following rainbow-colored text: “Don’t fight hate with hate. My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.” He also holds up a sign that reads “AIDS,” which may or may not be a reference to the following lyrics in his song: “Bitch, we like AIDS / I’m on your ass, we on your ass/ Bitch, we won’t go ’way.” Now that he’s no longer performing at Lollapalooza, we suppose he’ll have to wait a little longer to issue a clarification on that.
53 Comments
Bad baby!
Perfect replacement, honestly. Well done, Lollapalooza.
Cool. Never cared for DaBaby’s music, and have been suspicious of him since that video where he’s on a plane making fun of a flight attendant’s appearance.Young Thug on the other hand, I dig. Seems like a friendly weirdo who uses his voice as a unique instrument with a wide range of strange sounds.Also he’s never said deranged, hateful nonsense on stage, let alone doubled down on it when criticized for it! I appreciate that in a person.
hate to tell you this but Thug is absolutely a transphobe who’s been accused of physical violence against women. they really just traded one shitty prospect for another here
Well, shit. I mean, I knew that he allegedly slapped a woman who was in an argument with his fiancée. The charges were dropped though, so I always thought it sounded like we can’t really know 100% what went down.But that tweet about Dwayne Wade’s daughter… shit, I had not heard about that. That is really troublesome. So hateful.
Well, thank you for letting me know. I now wish I could delete that comment.
“My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.”Now that’s how you tell the world you’re a giant piece of bigoted shit in a single sentence. No need for multi-paragraph insincere apologies when you can just come out and say you refuse to take responsibility for your words.
Read the Constitution. The Founding Fathers say everyone has freedom to say whatever they want about whoever they want. They also say no one has the right to pull an artist from an all-day music festival because they’re just being themselves.
Oh, those psychic and infinitely malleable slaveowners…
Founding fathers had what to say about music festivals now?
checkmate libs
This comment is of high quality.
I’m also pretty sure they don’t say anything about anyone’s inalienable right to perform at a music festival.
This is impressive level trolling and the 12 people that starred your comment are also either trolling or fucking stupid.
Actually, I’m just going to go with the obvious choice and declare you and other 12 people as just motherfucking stupid.
Didn’t he also make a post framing the controversy as racist? That it was the fault of the companies dropping him for only pretending to support black artists while not understanding black culture (i.e., in his mind, homophobia)?
Is there an award for the most blatant non-apologies? Because this is a front-runner for the grand prize in 2021.
He really was oddly specific with that comment about sucking dicks in the parking lot. A lot of people are now suspicious that he has something he needs to get off of his chest. I hope he figures his shit out.
Got a real “Said the quiet part out loud” vibe from that comment.
37???
In a row?
Hey you, get back here.
Yeah, just imagine how much that has to occupy a person’s mind that they walk out on a stage in front of thousands of people to perform their hits and all they can think about is how many of these people are down to give or receive head in public. And some shit about AIDS, I guess.
So I take it DaBaby has never heard of Magic Johnson? Shit, Jim J. Bullock was practically patient zero for celebrities contracting HIV back in 1985, and he’s still with us.
Why did Jim J. Bullock sometimes go by JM J. BULLOCK?!?!
I know, right? It makes the J and M a little too close for comfort.
I know he use the J initial because there was already someone named Jim Bullock with a SAG card. I assume he used “Jm” to distinguish himself further.
Patient zero for celebrities was Rock Hudson. He died in 1985.
I’m well aware, that’s why I said “practically.” I should have mentioned Rock Hudson for clarity.
This has nothing to do with the article (because who wants to think about it) but lesser known is that the lovely Ian Charleson, who had a sudden moment leading up to him in back-to-back Best Pic winners (Chariots of Fire, starring, and Ghandi, smallish role). A few years later he was diagnosed and, prior to dying at age 40 in 1990 was Britain’s first public case, sacrificing his privacy in his final years to raise awareness.
This asshole was born in 1991, there were PSAs about HIV debunking that shit before he was born.
It’s pretty staggering that he thought it was a good idea to say that from a stage. You hate to call somebody stupid, but that’s just straight-up fucking stupid. Did he really think he was going to increase his audience with his insightful thinking?? Amazing.
Like for like. Lack of talent for lack of talent.
Is “dropping da baby” like “screwing the pooch? “
I expected a little more maturity from DaBaby.
But Tyler still gets a pass…
Throwing out DaBaby with the $10 bottled water.
Also not performing for similar reasons, Da Bathwater.
I don’t know, I think it was a mistake for Lollapalooza to get rid of both of them.
Glad to see rap/hip hop whatever is finally being called out for this kind of bigotry. I just don’t understand what took so long. My eldest listens to this kind of crap and a fair amount is just horrible hateful misogyny, homophobia and toxic masculinity.
Man, that is strange. Like…where else in America is there any of those things?
Not in any other pop culture genre, for one…
Maybe you’ve never heard of Roseanne, JK Rowling, Betty Friedan, Little Richard, Chuck Norris, Kevin Hart, Alec Baldwin or Paris Hilton. Or maybe your characterization of rap music is pretty racist. Or maybe your kid just has shitty taste in music.
Yes, he has shitty taste for sure.No, finding the bigoted content of a specific type of rap music to be offensive is not racist, sorry.
Yeah, definitely no misogyny in Hollywood films…from any era. Definitely nothing outside of fiction either, like the business side doesn’t have any of those things. Toxic masculinity? I just don’t see how. Especially with like larger studios in something like gaming, I just don’t see that being a thing.
I guess we aren’t in a pandemic anymore, good to know.
They should have replaced him with Lil Nas X.
What, so he can perform the half hour of music he’s actually recorded?
That’s about as much material as Crosby Stills and Nash had when they played at Woodstock.
I almost wish they’d kept him in the lineup just so fewer people would’ve attended. Our positivity rate was way up *before* Lolla.
“My apologies for being me (an ignorant bigot spouting absolute horseshit in public) the same way you want the freedom to be you (normal human beings looking for the respect and acceptance afforded to straight people as a given). You see how that works, right?”
Well that’s one way to replace a piece of shit with someone who’s only marginally better.