DaBaby Embraces His Status as the Villain of Hip-Hop
DaBaby brought out Tory Lanez during his performance at Rolling Loud. It was seen as a middle finger towards Megan Thee Stallion.
This past weekend, Rolling Loud — the biggest hip-hop festival in the world — held its annual festival in Miami. The closing act for the weekend was Post Malone. But, by the time Sunday evening was over, there would be another rapper to garner the top headlines.
DaBaby had the 8:45 set on the Ciroc stage — right after Megan Thee Stallionperformed. His performance was a polarizing set where he cemented himself as one of hip-hop's villains. Not only did it include a homophobic rant — where he lashed out against people with AIDs and HIV — but during his set he brought out Tory Lanez, who was, for whatever reason, wearing a teddy bear costume. (DaBaby teased the reveal, telling the crowd,“I’ll give somebody out here a million dollars if they can guess who in here.")
The two performed Lanez's latest single "SKAT," which dropped earlier this summer. On social media, the move was seen as disrespectful gesture toward Meg, who DaBaby has collaborated with in the past.
We should add that audience didn't appreciate the move, either. At one point, someone threw an "adida" shoe at DaBaby — George W. Bush style.
This month was the one year anniversary of Tory Lanez allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, a matter that is still being investigated.Lanez has been charged with one felony count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, personal use of a firearm, and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; he has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has tried to form some type of career comeback, with pretty lackluster results.
This performance also comes weeks after Meg and DaBaby went back and forth on Twitter. After the video for "SKAT" dropped, DaBaby retweeted a tweet making fun of Meg's shooting. (DaBaby said he didn't retweet it and there was some sort of glitch.) Meg responded by tweeting:
"Support me in private and publicly do something different…these industry men are very strange. This situation ain't no damn "beef" and I really wish people would stop down playing it like it's some internet shit for likes and retweets."
DaBaby responded by saying he had no "Bad energy" for her, adding that she should "stay focused."
Rapper Pardison Fontaine, who is currently dating Meg, also added some parting shots.
You can see there was still some bad feelings from the respective camps when, days later, Meg and DaBaby were not on stage together during a planned DJ Khaled performance at the 2021 BET Awards.
So, when you add all of that context together, you can see why hip-hop fans on social media felt like this was a weak move on DaBaby's part. As the video was passed around, the reaction is clear — DaBaby sentiment is at a low.
Does he care? Who knows. But it's clear over the past couple of weeks that Tory and DaBaby — who had a strange incident involving kids selling candy — have embraced their status as hip-hop's two main villains.
After his performance garnered so much negative attention, DaBaby went to social media to address his homophobic comments, saying he wasn't talking to his gay fans because they're not "nasty gay niggas" and "junkies" who do sexual acts in public.
Yeah, this is not better.