Trippie Redd’s foray into fatherhood was brief. The rapper, real name Michael Lamar White IV, has now admitted the baby he shared with the world last year is not his biological child. Having just welcomed a son with his girlfriend Halle Bailey, DDG was keen to talk about fatherhood in a recent video blog, and that’s when Redd opened up about not being a dad.
TMZ obtained the raw footage from this interview. The clip in question is clearly edited out of the final video.
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As DDG toured Redd’s $13 million mansion, which is painted entirely black, he told him, “I feel like we had a kid around the same time.” Redd then dropped the bombshell: “Bruh, I got a DNA test. I don’t even got a kid.”
He added: “I swear, bro. I thought I did, and then I told the world that. Like, ahead of time, I never got no DNA test. And I ended up getting a DNA test and it wasn’t my kid.”
In fact, Redd says his mother encouraged him to take a paternity test, and two tests ultimately failed to end up a match. My mom was like, ‘Get a DNA test.’ You know how moms be. They be knowing. She was like, ‘Get a DNA test.’”
As Redd described, finding out the truth was emotionally draining, “I feel like all the things I was going through during that time was like, really fucking with me. That’s why I couldn’t go on tour, or like, couldn’t do shows and shit.
“I couldn’t really get in my spunk and feel good and shit. It was a lot of s— going on. Just a lot of confusion. I mean, it’s life. A lot of shit just happens. Maybe it happened for a reason.”
His fatherly pride was briefly evident when he shared the baby’s picture on social media and christened him Saint Michael White, the same name as the EP he released around the time of his birth. In fact, Redd even canceled his concert tour to attend to his parental responsibilities, and he admitted to DDG that the brief time he got to hold and kiss the baby broke his heart. This was a sad outcome for all involved; however, at least Redd was willing to step up and be a father when he believed it was his duty.
Redd’s professional music career took off in 2017 with the release of his first mixtape, A Love Letter to You, which included the hit single “Love Scars.” Due to the mixtape’s success, the rapper’s popularity grew rapidly following the release of his debut studio album, Life’s a Trip, which debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart in 2018. The albums he has released since then, including !, Pegasus, and Trip at Knight, have all consistently performed well, with A Love Letter to You 4 reaching the top spot on the Billboard 200
On Jan. 20, 2023, White released his fifth studio album, Mansion Musik, which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200 to mixed reviews. On Aug. 11, 2023, he released his fifth commercial mixtape, A Love Letter To You 5.
The 7-track EP Saint Michael was released late in 2023. In November 2023, he released Saint Michael V2, an expanded version. Redd announced in March 2024 that he would collaborate with MGK on a collaborative extended play titled Genre: Sadboy, which was released on March 29, 2024, to negative reviews.