HYBE's Trainee A Production Team And Trainee Leo Apologize For Offensive Lyrics

HYBE’s Trainee A production team and trainee Leo have both formally apologized over the recent controversy regarding his rap lyrics.

Leo, who is best-known for his brief appearance in BTS‘s music video for “Permission to Dance,” is one of the trainees in HYBE’s Trainee A group—a team of six trainees that many have speculated is the new boy group that Big Hit Music plans to debut in 2022.

Leo recently came under fire over a video posted to Trainee A’s official YouTube account entitled “Showdown” in which he participated in a rap battle.

The 19-year-old trainee, who hails from Australia, personally wrote his own English lyrics for the battle—and many were alarmed by some of the lines in his rap, which were criticized for being misogynistic and offensive to women, such as “ain’t nobody gon tell me why that bitch stopped breathing/fuck that hoe in my bank/yeah that shit stopped breathing/tell that bitch/took that bitch to the store/ain’t nobody gon tell me why that bitch stopped breathing.”

https://twitter.com/Iesbisa/status/1475850671295541248

On December 29, after deleting the video in question, the Trainee A production team posted the following apology to their official YouTube account in English:

Hello.

This is the Trainee A Content Production Team.

We would like to express our deepest apologies regarding the inappropriate lyrics in “Leo’s SHOWDOWN” video uploaded on the Trainee A YouTube channel in October.

We sincerely apologize for failing to recognize the seriousness of the issue and releasing a video with inappropriate content. After having recognized the issue, we have decided to delete the video.

We would also like to apologize to everyone to whom we caused pain and distress due to the lyrics in question. We will exercise extra caution in creating content. 

We will exercise vigilance to ensure that every trainee including Leo fully understands the issues related to diversity and respect so that they can be more mindful of their actions and words. 

We will also make sure to be more attentive to your advice and we will continue to strive to create better content.

We would like to apologize once again to everyone who may have felt pain and distress by the Trainee A video.

From Trainee A Content Production Team.

The team also posted the following English apology from Leo:

Hello. This is Leo.

I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone who has been offended by the lyrics released on the first episode of SHOWDOWN.

As it was a competition, I felt as though I needed to use more provocative words and expressions in order to make an impact. This ultimately led me to make an extremely poor decision in which I feel great embarrassment over. I had absolutely no intention to offend or degrade anyone but my words and thoughts were very immature and I deeply apologize.

I’ve been endlessly reflecting on my mistakes, and after rewatching the video, I’m feeling extremely embarrassed and ashamed of my performance. Although I can’t take it back, I am aware that this was entirely my fault and will strive to do whatever it takes to reflect and learn from my mistakes.

Once again, to everyone who may have felt offended by my inappropriate actions and words, I sincerely apologize. I will take this opportunity to reflect and think of more positive and mature ways to express myself through my music.