Dave Chappelle Says DaBaby Canceled for Homophobia, Not for Having Killed Someone

Comedian Dave Chappelle's new Netflix special "The Closer" hit the screen Oct. 5 and the funnyman is getting buzz for a joke built around DaBaby's anti-LGTBQ+ comments at a concert last summer.

UK newspaper The Independent reported that Chappelle set the joke up by saying, "A lot of the LGBT community doesn't know DaBaby's history. He's a wild guy. He once shot a n****r and killed him. In Walmart. Oh, this is true. Google it. Nothing bad happened to his career."

The comic then delivered his punchline: "In our country, you can shoot and kill a n****r, but you better not hurt a gay person's feelings!"

The New York Post filled in the backstory, recalling that "Back in 2018, DaBaby admitted to fatally shooting a 19-year-old man inside a North Carolina Walmart, claiming he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors soon dropped the case against him before he went on to release two critically acclaimed, chart-topping albums."

But DaBaby lost several gigs after making remarks at the Rolling Loud Festival in Miami last July that, as EDGE reported at the time, mischaracterized AIDS as a disease that will kill in a matter of weeks, and suggested that gay men routinely have public sex.

"In a clip being circulated on social media from the event, he tells men who aren't 'sucking dick in the parking lot' to put their phone torches on, while also reaching out to those who 'didn't show up' with a sexually transmitted infection," Metro reported at the time.

In a clip of him pacing the stage, DaBaby can also be heard saying: "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, three weeks, then put your cell phone light up."

When the remarks prompted an outcry, DaBaby was initially defiant, Yahoo News reported, saying that when he made the remarks, "All the lights went up – gay or straight – you wanna know why? Because even my gay fans don't got f–king AIDS, stupid ass n–as. They don't got AIDS. My gay fans, they take care of themselves. They ain't no nasty gay n–as, see what I'm saying? They ain't no junkies on the street."

"Music festival organizers dropped him from a series of star-studded shows, which prompted him to complain that he had been 'canceled,'" the New York Post recounted. Among the gigs that dropped DaBaby: Lollapalooza, where he had originally been scheduled to close the music festival, and the Governors Ball in New York. Kanye West reacted by removing a remix of his song "Nah Nah Nah" that featured DaBaby from streaming platforms.

DaBaby later apologized for the remarks, posting messages on Twitter and Instagram – though he later deleted the Instagram post.

DaBaby later met with nine organizations promoting HIV awareness, apologizing once again during the meeting.

Chappelle himself has been criticized in the past for material seen by some as homophobic, but in "The Closer" he declared that "he no longer will make those types of gags 'until we are both sure that we are laughing together,'" The Independent said.