Rapper DaBaby has provoked criticism after releasing a new music video that re-enacts a fatal stabbing on a North Carolina light rail train, recast as an intervention that saves a life.
The track Save Me, released on September 16 by the artist whose real name is Jonathan Lyndale Kirk, quickly gained traction online, surpassing 400,000 YouTube views by September 17 afternoon. However, its graphic subject matter has prompted backlash across social media.
The video dramatises the killing of 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska, who was fatally stabbed while travelling on a Charlotte Area Transit System train last month. Surveillance footage showed Zarutska seated alone, with a man behind her who then stood and brandished a knife without warning. The real incident ended in tragedy, but DaBaby’s version depicts him as a fellow passenger who intercepts the attack by grabbing the assailant’s hand.
In the climactic scene, the fictionalised attacker is led calmly off the train and past police officers.
«Man, we can’t save ’em. You know what I’m sayin’? I might be one of them,» DaBaby remarks during the sequence.
The creative choice has been widely questioned online.
