DaBaby's Festival Started After Missed Deadline For His Apology Video

A new report reveals DaBaby’s string of festival cancellations may have started after he missed a second chance to mend things with promoters that could have saved his festival run.

Source: Kate Nichole / Kate Nichole

It’s been over a week since DaBaby’s Rolling Loud performance that could very well change his career forever. His homophobic comments on stage, to him, were just a part of the show, but his remarks came with a ton of consequences.

Since then, he’s been called out by the LGBT+ community, with even Elton John speaking out, which seemed to accelerate the backlash that much more. Following some statements from celebs, DaBaby has been dropped from Lollapalooza, ACL, Music Midtown and basically every festival he was scheduled to perform at except for Summer Jam.

According to Billboard, the cancellations started after he missed a deadline to deliver a video apologizing before his Lollapalooza set.

Representatives for rapper DaBaby reached out to the promoters of seven fall festivals that had booked the Charlotte, N.C., rapper and assured them an apology would be forthcoming. DaBaby was planning to tape a short video that would be played before he took the stage at Lollapalooza in Chicago on Sunday, Aug. 1, in which he would deliver a heartfelt apology to the LGBTQ+ community for his distasteful remarks during his set in Miami the previous weekend.

The video would make up for DaBaby’s lackluster apology on July 27 (two days after his Rolling Loud set) where he brushed off complaints by LGBTQ+ activists, writing on Twitter, “I ain’t trippin on y’all, do you. y’all business is y’all business.” The remarks only amplified public outcry that DaBaby be dropped from his upcoming gigs, and on July 28, reps for DaBaby’s camp assured the various festival promoters on his upcoming tour that the video he was creating to air before his set at Lollapalooza would be a sincere apology.

But the video never arrived. On Sunday morning, Lollapalooza issued a statement via social media, saying, “DaBaby will no longer be performing at Grant Park tonight.” As the day wore on, news began to trickle out that DaBaby’s camp had missed its deadline to deliver the apology video to Lollapalooza organizers C3 Presents and Live Nation. Rapper Young Thug would now perform in DaBaby’s time slot instead.

Why he missed the deadline, we may never know, but he did issue a written apology on his Instagram. Since then, he has been dropped by five festivals and that apology seems to not have stopped the backlash or helped him save face at all.

Can he overcome this? Yes. Should he start the work now? Absolutely. Not saying he needs a crisis management team, but consulting with someone who used to work in that field might not hurt.