This past weekend, while performing at Miami’s Rolling Loud festival, rap star DaBaby said some fucked up things about gay people and about AIDS: “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!… Fellas, if you ain’t sucking dick in the parking lot, put your cellphone lighter up!” Shortly thereafter, attempting to explain his comments on Instagram, DaBaby made things worse: “[My gay fans] don’t got AIDS. My gay fans, they take care of themselves. They ain’t no nasty gay n***as. See what I’m saying? They ain’t no junkies in the street… Even my gay fans got standards.”

Yesterday, DaBaby’s recent collaborator Dua Lipa blasted those comments, proclaiming herself “surprised and horrified” by what DaBaby had said: “I really don’t recognise this as the person I worked with.” On Twitter yesterday evening, DaBaby attempted to apologize for what he’d said: “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.”

In that series of tweets, though, the tone of what DaBaby wrote was still grumpy and defensive. DaBaby clearly does not believe that he should have to apologize for this. Here’s what he wrote:

I tell fans to put a cellphone light in the air y’all start a million man March.✊🏾

I told you y’all digested that wrong 🤷🏾‍♂️but I ain’t gone lie I’m impressed.

Now show this same amount of support when a racist cop kill one of our black ass…YA NOT 😂

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 LGBT community… I ain’t trippin on y’all, do you. y’all business is y’all business.

& for any brands, networks, or artists that like to profit off of black rappers influence on the culture, without understanding it or having the patience to deal with what comes with the position we play in our culture.

Keep yo money next time
us “NIGGAS” human too.
#GodBless

Other than that y’all cheer the fuck up & be proud of who you are cuz you can’t make me feel less of myself. 💪🏾

Aside from that

HIDALGO, TEXAS
&
CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS

Get them tickets for Friday & Saturday so I can show y’all how da fuck I get down. 🔥

#LIVESHOWKILLA

https://twitter.com/DaBabyDaBaby/status/1420139965690912780

https://twitter.com/DaBabyDaBaby/status/1420148416093503491

https://twitter.com/DaBabyDaBaby/status/1420155176212652034

UPDATE: DaBaby addresses his comments in the new music video for his song “Giving What It’s Supposed To Give.” In the video, he holds a sign that says “AIDS,” and it concludes with a message in rainbow lettering that reads “Don’t Fight Hate With Hate” and “My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.”