Da Brat issues apology over ‘Jiminy Cricket’ Black sperm donor joke

Veteran rapper, Da Brat, issued an apology after she drew criticism for comments she made about the appearance of the Black sperm donors that she and her wife were to choose for her pregnancy.

In an appearance with her wife on the Tamron Hall show on Thursday, the 49-year-old said her comments were “taken way out of context”, PEOPLE reported. Da Brat made the comments in question when she was explaining their decision behind settling on a White sperm donor. 

The Funkdafied rapper had said that they had challenges getting a Black sperm donor as a result of her wife’s genetic markers, adding that though they eventually managed to trim their search from “thousands of donors down to 224” and to “about one”, they still were not satisfied with the donors to choose from.

“If you look like Jiminy Cricket — the one or two Black people I saw… that thing ain’t finna be looking like my child,” the rapper said on their Brat Loves Judy television series. 

During their sit-down on the Tamron Hall show, Da Brat said she did not think her initial comments “would be offensive to anybody.” “I cracked jokes about almost everybody that I saw, that one just happened to make it in the show. I wasn’t trying to be mean or say anything negative about Black people,” she said.

“I guess they thought it was funny and I didn’t think it would bother anybody or else I would have taken it out. I had no idea people were going to be so offended, but I meant no harm whatsoever,” she added. “People take things and run with it. I’m like, ‘What?’ People who know me know that I didn’t mean any harm.”

The rapper said they wanted and were also looking for a Black sperm donor, so “it was just misconstrued and taken way out of context.” “If I offended anybody, I do apologize. But it was a joke between me and my wife and the doctor, like, we joke like that, we play around so it wasn’t meant to be offensive in any way,” she said.

Da Brat’s wife, Jesseca “Judy” Harris-Dupart, also spoke about the ire they drew on social media for the comments and how she tried to shield her partner from the backlash. “I’m more on social media than she is,” Dupart said. “And there were things that I was really trying to avoid her from seeing.”

“They had comments that said, ‘I just hope you guys miscarry,'” she said, adding that she tried “to delete a lot of stuff so she can’t see it on my page and she can’t see it on her page because it was extreme hate. I’m kind of used to some of it from being on social media, but when it comes to our child — something that we work really, really hard for — I felt like if nothing else at this time, this should be at least an educational moment.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the rapper and her wife also opened up about how challenging it was for them to find a sperm donor, per PEOPLE. “We never worried about it,” Da Brat said. “We were more worried about the whole IVF process where she had to get shots in her stomach in the beginning and take all these hormonal medicines and I had to give myself shots and she had to give me shots and then she ended up at the hospital with blood clots in her lungs once they retrieved their eggs.”

The 49-year-old also opened up about suffering a miscarriage and having polyps in her uterus when she was trying to get pregnant. “It was just so many different things. But we thought when we got to the donor part it would be a breeze, it would be easy,” she said.