DaniLeigh Says She’s Not ‘Colorist’ or ‘Racist’ in Apology Following ‘Yellow Bone’ Backlash

DaniLeigh and rapper DaBaby made headlines for their relationship, but now, DaniLeigh’s recent controversy is creating more buzz than the relationship itself. After she featured a song on her Instagram story that was deemed problematic, DaniLeigh issued a video to apologize.

DaniLeigh’s ‘Yellow Bone’ song resulted in backlash

DaniLeigh, who went public with her relationship with DaBaby, recently included an unreleased track, “Yellow Bone,” on her Instagram. She deleted the post, but the caption for it referenced one of the lyrics, ‘YELLOW BONE THATS WHAT HE WANT,” with DaBaby seemingly being the “he” she referred to. It immediately received backlash from people who accused her song of being racist and colorist, especially considering DaniLeigh, who is Dominican-American, has not definitely said that she is Afro-Latinx.

She responded to in her Instagram comments, writing, “Why I can’t make a song for my light skin baddies??” Why y’all think I’m hating on other colors when there are millions of songs speaking on all types… Why y’all so sensitive & take it personal… Gahhhh d**n.”

On Twitter, she doubled down on the song, stating, “Congratulations y’all gotta another thing to say about me when u hate…it’s all good .. only God can ‘cancel’ me.” She later apologized, saying, “I’m sorry if I offended u.”

DaniLeigh takes to Instagram to apologize for the song

Over the weekend, DaniLeigh posted a video on Instagram explaining her perception of the backlash and offering an on-camera apology.

“I feel super misunderstood,” she said in an Instagram video, as reported by The Jasmine Brand. “The song ‘Yellow Bone Is What He Want’, I think people twisted it into thinking that I’m trying to bash another woman, another skin tone. That was never my intention. I wasn’t brought up like that. I ain’t never looked at my skin as a privilege, I’ve never looked at me as I’m better than somebody because of my skin tone.”

She added that she wanted to talk about “lightskin” women just like songs made by brown-skinned women. “I see brown skin woman flaunt their skin all the time in music, why can’t I talk about mine?” she continued. “If you look at me, I’m lightskin, I’m a yellow bone in my opinion…it wasn’t something that I looked at so deeply which i can see why people will take it deeply. I understand, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t sensitive to the topic [of colorism].”

The musician also said that she has darker-skinned friends and dates DaBaby as evidence that she is not racist or colorist.

“I’m not a colorist, I’m not a racist, I date a whole chocolate man , I have beautiful dark skin friends,” she said. “Skin isn’t something I even see, it’s not something I look at.”

DaniLeigh’s apology isn’t well-received

DaniLeigh’s apology was immediately reposted on Instagram by blogs, including The Shade Room.

For most fans, it seems as if her apology didn’t change things that much in their eyes.

“Dem numbers went down!” wrote one fan. “Just the other day it was ‘only god can cancel me,’ today it’s let me explain 🥴. Hurt the pocket, they sing a different song.”

Some people said that DaniLeigh missed what people were actually criticizing her about. “She missed what people were saying,” someone else said. “It’s not just that it perpetuates a certain narrative — it’s that yellowbone is used to describe light skinned Black women, which she is not and made clear she isn’t when she identified as other during the George Floyd protests.”

“It’s the accent and her thinking she’s lightskin for me,” said another person.

DaBaby still has not commented on the matter.