DaBaby's Lollapalooza Gig Canceled After His Comments About LGBTQ+ Community

Rapper DaBaby will not perform at the 2021 Lollapalooza music festival after all. His scheduled headlining set was canceled last-minute amid controversy over his recent homophobic comments.

By Corinne Heller Aug 01, 2021 7:11 PMTags
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Organizers of the 2021 Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago have canceled DaBaby's headlining performance amid controversy over his recent homophobic comments.

The 29-year-old rapper, who had expressed excitement over his set that was scheduled to take place Sunday, Aug. 1, has not responded directly about the decision. His rep had no immediate comment when reached by E! News.

"Lollapalooza was founded on diversity, inclusivity, respect, and love," read a post on the festival's Instagram Stories on Sunday, Aug. 1. "With that in mind, DaBaby will no longer be performing at Grant Park tonight."

Last weekend, while performing onstage at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami, DaBaby asked members of the audience to shine their phone flashlights if they "didn't show up today with HIV/AIDS, any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that will make you die in two to three weeks," NBC News reported, adding that the rapper later made other crude comments about gay men and women, according to a now-viral video.

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DaBaby faced backlash over his comments, including criticism from fellow musicians Elton John and Dua Lipa, who he previously collaborated with on a remix of her hit song, "Levitating." Two days after the event, the rapper tweeted, "I tell fans to put a cellphone light in the air y'all start a million man March [raised fist emoji]. I told you y'all digested that wrong Man [shrug emoji] 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 Face with tears of joy."

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He later wrote, "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 [holding hands emoji] But the LGBT community... I ain't trippin on y'all, do you. y'all business is y'all business."

On Friday and Saturday, DaBaby performed two concerts in Texas. On Sunday, hours after his Lollapalooza gig performance was canceled, the rapper shared on his Instagram Story an old viral video of Roc-A-Fella CEO Damon Dash sharing his rules for success, saying, "It take fearlessness to be first. To not move with the crowd, to move alone and get scrutinized by people that do move with the crowd to look good. It's all part of the game."

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