Van Lathan has spoken about the festivals that have dropped DaBaby.
“The festival doesn’t have a soul, it’s a corporate entity. That means it’s cool with whatever the consumer is cool with,” he writes.
“If we’re all singing along to songs about misogyny, murder, and malice, then they figure it’s cool to put it on stage,” he continued. “But when a community has standards about how they’ll be spoken to or about, like the LGBTQ+ community obviously does, then the festival or corporate entity listens.”
He highlighted that the festivals have no problem promoting artists who promote Black on Black violence.
“If we wanted festivals to not book artists that profited in Black Death we’d have to set a community standard on what we accept.” He added, “We won’t because by and large we like and understand the music. They will do what we do.”
Is he right — and if he is, is it time to cancel the festivals?
