The fallout from DaBaby’s disastrous Rolling Loud Miami set continues to settle, as more voices enter the chat to debate his demerits. While the majority of the reactions to DaBaby’s comments have deplored his ill-chosen words, Dave Chappelle has a different question on his mind. In his new Netflix special The Closer, which debuted today, Chappelle juxtaposes the backlash to DaBaby’s homophobic comments with the rapper’s violent lyrics — which aren’t all stereotypical rapper bluster.
Chappelle leads into the observation by cheekily addressing the backlash to his own recent sets, on which he seems to have specifically targeted queer people in order to point out what he sees as discrepancies in the way they are treated in comparison to Black people (setting aside the fact that people can be … both). “All the questions you might have had about all these jokes I’ve said in the last few years, I hope to answer tonight,” he says. “And I’d like to start by addressing the [LGBTQ] community directly. I want every member of that community to know that I come here tonight in peace and I hope to negotiate the release of DaBaby.”
After some additional preamble, he reminds the audience that before DaBaby’s rise to fame (in fact, almost immediately before it) the rapper was involved in a fatal shooting, in which he claimed self-defense. Then, Dave poses his observation: “In our country, you can shoot and kill a n***a but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings.” It’s doubtful that anything’s as simple as that — queer people are often the targets of just as brutal crimes for little other reason than being queer — but to his credit, Chappelle promises to address the nuance in the special. We’ll see if he does.
DaBaby, meanwhile, has continued to address the fallout himself, meeting with organizations dedicated to HIV/AIDS awareness and sneering at some of his critics in his return to the stage at Summer Jam.
Watch the trailer for Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, which is now streaming on Netflix, above.