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Lil Nas X feels “bad” about DaBaby backlash: “I hope he grows from it”

The rapper was criticised earlier this year for on-stage homophobic comments

By Will Richards

Lil Nas X looking directly at the camera with red hair
Lil Nas X. (Picture: Press).

Lil Nas X says he feels “bad” for DaBaby after the rapper faced significant backlash after making homophobic comments on stage earlier this year.

At a show at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami back in July, DaBaby said to the crowd: “Fellas, if you ain’t sucking dick in the parking lot, put your cellphone light up.” Further comments about HIV prompted criticism from the likes of Dua Lipa and Elton John.

Responding after the incident, DaBaby said: “What I do at a live show is for the audience at the live show. It’ll never translate correctly to somebody looking at a little five, six-second clip from their goddamn crib on their phone. It just don’t work like that,” the rapper said.

“Because, regardless of what y’all motherfuckers are talking about and how the internet twisted up my motherfucking words, me and all my fans at the show, the gay ones and the straight ones, we turned the fuck up.”

Asked about the incident in a new interview with GQ though, Lil Nas X said that the comments stemmed from DaBaby being a part of a “hypermasculine” rap scene.

“I’m not going to lie, I feel bad for DaBaby,” he said. “I hope he grows from it. I hope he’s able to. But I don’t know. The whole landscape is very hypermasculine. It’s so great and so amazing that all these female rappers are breaking through. And, in a way, female rappers are the biggest rappers right now.”

The ‘Montero’ rapper added: “I do feel like this newer generation of rappers who are coming in, and the ones who are here, are going to have to reshape their thoughts. Because change is happening. There’s going to be so many gay rappers. There’s going to be more trans people in the industry and whatnot. Ten years from now, everything that I’m doing won’t even seem like it was shocking.”