Despite concerns about COVID, Lollapalooza is still rolling on this weekend in Chicago. The annual music festival was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, but returned on July 29 to reign over Grant Park with porous safety restrictions and acts like Jack Harlow, Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, and Limp Bizkit (along with a white-haired Fred Durst). On Sunday, just hours before DaBaby was to perform, the festival announced via Twitter that he would be replaced with Young Thug.
The announcement reads in full:
Lollapalooza was founded on diversity, inclusivity, respect, and love. With that in mind, DaBaby will no longer be performing at Grant Park tonight. Young Thug will now perform at 9:00pm on the Bud Light Seltzer Stage, and G Herbo will perform at 4:00pm on the T-Mobile Stage.
Let’s back up a bit. In July 25, while performing at Rolling Loud Miami, DaBaby decided to say a bunch of homophobic things, like “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.” After a video of his remarks went viral on Twitter, the Blame It On Baby rapper defended himself via a multi-part Instagram story, telling any of his critics who weren’t in attendance to “shut the fuck up.” But fellow artists like Questlove called out his bigoted remarks, while Elton John and Madonna combatted DaBaby’s blatantly inaccurate statements about living with HIV/AIDS.
Dua Lipa, who collaborated with DaBaby on a remix of “Levitating,” said in her own IG Story that she was “surprised and horrified at DaBaby’s comments.” The Future Nostalgia performer went on: “I really don’t recognise this as the person I worked with. I know my fans know where my heart lies and that I stand 100% with the LGBTQ community. We need to come together to fight the stigma and ignorance around HIV/AIDS.” On July 28, DaBaby dropped a new music video for “Giving What It’s Supposed to Give,” which ends with the following rainbow-colored text: “Don’t fight hate with hate. My apologies for being me the same way you want the freedom to be you.” He also holds up a sign that reads “AIDS,” which may or may not be a reference to the following lyrics in his song: “Bitch, we like AIDS / I’m on your ass, we on your ass/ Bitch, we won’t go ’way.” Now that he’s no longer performing at Lollapalooza, we suppose he’ll have to wait a little longer to issue a clarification on that.