Basketball great Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, blasted rapper Meek Mill for what she called “extremely insensitive” lyrics about her husband’s tragic death.
Bryant’s criticism came after a tune, “Don’t Worry (RIP Kobe),” leaked online over the weekend with the lyric, “Yeah, and if I ever lack, I’m goin’ out with my chopper, it be another Kobe.” The song is a collaboration between the Grammy-nominated Mill and rapper Lil Baby.
L.A. Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others died just over a year ago when private helicopter in which they were traveling crashed in California.
Now, a year after she tragically lost her husband and daughter, Vanessa Bryant lamented the rap lyric about her husband’s death in the Meek Mill song, saying that the line “lacks respect and tact.”
“Dear Meek Mill,” Vanessa Bryant posted to Instagram, “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 than this. If you are a fan, fine, there’s a better way to show your admiration for my husband. This lacks respect and tact.”
For his part, Mill seemed to seesaw back and forth from refusing to apologize, to saying that the lyric was an Internet hoax, to ultimately apologizing for the lyric. His immediate Tweet in response to Vanessa Bryant was defiant. Mill tweeted, “I’m going back savage in this shit … fuck ya feelings!”
That tweet was soon deleted, but Mill went on to hint that the lyric was a hoax.
In one tweet he wrote, “They paying to influence y’all now … its almost like mind control ‘wake up.'” In another he added, “somebody promo a narrative and y’all follow it…. y’all internet antics cannot stop me ….shit like zombie land or something! Lol”
Eventually, Meek Mill wrote a tweet claiming that he apologized to Vanessa in a private message.
“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!” he wrote on Tuesday morning.
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