Just a few months after he was censured over making questionable comments during a concert in Miami, DaBaby has bounced back, announcing his Live Show Killa Tour hitting 22 major cities over the next three months. The tour is presented by Rolling Loud, the festival where he initially got into trouble and started his comeback by appearing at the festival’s New York iteration this past weekend during his mentor 50 Cent’s headlining set.
According to TMZ, a representative for Rolling Loud says the festival’s organizers believe that DaBaby has learned his lesson and grown as a person. In the aftermath of the initial backlash against him, he was removed from several festivals‘ previously-booked lineups and publicly rebuked by a number of public entities, including his “Levitating” collaborator Dua Lipa, pop icon Elton John, and GLAAD, which issued a statement calling his words “inaccurate, hurtful, and harmful.”
During his Rolling Loud set in July, DaBaby tried to hype up the crowd, but his awkwardly-worded exhortation wound up coming across as homophobic and discriminatory. “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, any of them deadly sexual transmitted diseases that make you die in two or three weeks, then put your cell phone light in the air,” he said. “Fellas, if you ain’t suck a n****’s dick in the parking lot, put your cell phone light in the air.”
Throughout the wave of criticism elicited by his statements, DaBaby either flat-out refused to apologize or egged on his detractors, although he did meet with a number of HIV/AIDs advocate groups. The incident extended into a bit in Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special and became a hot topic of debate, but that didn’t stop LGBTQ nonprofit organization Relationship Unleashed from issuing a statement about both that spawned a mini-controversy of its own.
