DaBaby regretted how he handled the backlash to his homophobic comments at the 2021 Rolling Loud Festival in Miami. The Interscope Records artist believed he succumbed to public pressure instead of powering through the controversy, telling the Breakfast Club he “dropped the f###### ball.”
“[I] hold myself accountable for the way that I allowed s### to take place over the last four years,” he said. “I could’ve put out a body of work like How TF Is This a Mixtape? immediately after the controversy and boom—trumped all that s###. That’s light. The s### that I done did while being a mainstream artist, while I was the most talked about artist in the game, the s### that I was doing—I don’t even being trying to bring this s### up. I whoop a n####’s ass on camera then go on the cover of Billboard magazine the next day … This s### is public record.”
Multiple festivals dropped DaBaby due to the outrage over his Rolling Loud rant. The controversy contributed to his decline as a mainstream star.
“If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that’ll make you die in two or three weeks, put your cellphone light in the air,” he told the crowd.
Dua Lipa, who collaborated with DaBaby on the song “Levitating,” said she was “horrified” by his remarks. Elton John and Madonna were among the notable artists who publicly condemned the rapper.
“[I allowed] myself to get tricked into being in a space to where I feel like I’m at the mercy of some m############ who don’t understand me as an artist anyway,” DaBaby said on the Breakfast Club. “Because anybody who is a fan of me, they already know it ain’t nothing I can say that’ll throw them off to the point where they [say], ‘Aw, you’re a bad person. I’m turning my back.’ Ain’t no way. I done said worse!”
DaBaby released How TF Is This a Mixtape? in September.
Stream it below.