Rapper Meek Mill tweeted early Tuesday that he had apologized to Vanessa Bryant hours after she criticized him for reported lyrics about her late husband, Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, that she considered to be “extremely insensitive and disrespectful.”
Last week, the lyrics to what was a yet-to-be-released song by Mill titled “Don’t Worry (RIP Kobe)” were leaked online. They contained the lines, “If I ever lack, I’m goin’ out with my chopper / It be another Kobe” — an apparent reference to the Jan. 26, 2020, helicopter crash that killed Vanessa Bryant’s husband, their daughter Gianna and seven others.
An immediate backlash followed. The rapper born as Robert Rihmeek Williams seemed to dismiss those critics, tweeting Wednesday, “somebody promo a narrative and y’all follow it. . . . y’all internet antics cannot stop me” and “They paying to influence y’all now . . . its almost like mind control ‘wake up.’”
Vanessa Bryant weighed in Monday night with a statement on her Instagram story:
“Dear @meekmill, I find this line to be extremely insensitive and disrespectful. Period. I am not familiar with any of your music, but I believe you can do better that this. If you are a fan, fine, there’s a better way to show your admiration for my husband. This lacks respect and tact.”
Mill initially stood his ground in apparent response to Bryant’s comments, tweeting: “I don’t think we on the same signal y’all . . . I don’t see what y’all see. . . . I be looking at the net laughing like I did [when] I say random s— all day on social . . . it becomes a trend to hate on me every once in a while but I feed off that s—.”
An hour later, however, he acknowledged that he had given an apology to the one person he felt deserved it.
I apologized to her in private earlier today not to the public…Nothing I say on my page directed to a internet viral moment or the family of a grieving woman! If you care about someone grieving change the subject!
— Meek Mill (@MeekMill) February 23, 2021
“I apologized to her in private earlier today not to the public,” Mill tweeted in an apparent reference to Vanessa Bryant.
He added: “If you care about someone grieving change the subject!”
