DaBaby Is Not Sorry

After the rapper’s homophobic comments led to fumbled bags, his sudden change of heart feels like damage control

Michael Arceneaux
LEVEL
Published in
5 min readAug 3, 2021

--

Photo: Rich Fury/Getty Images

DaBaby insists on being a brat about a mess of his own making.

On Monday, the rapper logged onto Instagram to take another stab at saying sorry for homophobic comments he made during his performance at the Rolling Loud Festival. The timing makes it hard to accept, given that it suspiciously comes on the heels of him starting to lose money.

Over the weekend, DaBaby was dropped from the United Kingdom’s upcoming Parklife festival and Chicago’s Lollapalooza. Not long before he posted this expanded apology, the organizers of New York City’s upcoming Governors Ball released a statement Monday morning condemning “hate or discrimination of any kind.” And BoohooMan — less than a month after dropping a collab with the rapper — said they were parting ways with him due to his homophobic comments.

DaBaby’s management seems to have successfully convinced him that apologies are inexpensive answers to expensive problems caused by one’s mistakes. But while it’s technically never too late to say I’m sorry, some folks should try to offer acts of contrition sooner than others. Not only did DaBaby wait too damn long to apologize, the apology itself manages to somehow make DaBaby the victim in all of this. A gaslighter to the very end, I’ll give him that.

“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 post reads. “As a man who has had to make his own way from very difficult circumstances, having people I know work publicly against me — knowing that what I needed was … guidance — has been challenging. 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.”

He continues, “I want to apologize to the LGBTQ+ community for the hurtful and triggering comments I made. Again, I apologize for my misinformed comments about HIV/AIDS and I know education on this is important. Love to all. God bless.”

--

--

Michael Arceneaux
LEVEL

New York Times bestselling author of “I Can’t Date Jesus” and “I Don’t Want To Die Poor.”