Kriti Mehrotra
Danielle “Bhad Bhabie” Bregoli (pronounced “bad baby”) honestly needs no introduction to anyone who has actively been on the internet over the past decade, considering her virality. For the uninitiated, she rose to fame in 2016 at the tender age of 13 for uttering the phrase, “Catch me outside, how about that?” which sounded like “Cash me ousside, how bout dah” on ‘Dr. Phil.’ Thus, it goes without saying she came across as bratty and spoilt back then, yet her recent appearance on Max’s ‘Teen Torture, Inc.’ has given us a much deeper insight into who she really is.
Danielle Bregoli Began Acting Out in the Mid-2010s
While Danielle has never shared the intense details of her early home life, she was primarily raised by her mother following her parents’ separation when Danielle was just a toddler. As a result, she has reportedly always been estranged from her father — Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy Ira Peskowitz — and didn’t ever get to know her two paternal younger half-brothers either. It was only she and her mother, Barbara Ann Bregoli, in their Italian Catholic household, resulting in the youngster wanting to get as far away from her as possible by the time she’d turned 13.
That’s how this duo ended up on the September 2016 ‘Dr. Phil’ segment titled ‘I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime.’ At the end of it, Danielle was actually unwillingly sent to spend some time at the Turn-About Ranch for troubled teens in Escalante, Utah, only for those days to be the very worst of her life. She not only heard a murder during her time there — 17-year-old Clay Brewer had killed 61-year-old ranch hand Jimmy Woolsey while trying to get away — but was also allegedly abused.
According to Danielle’s own accounts, she was once forced to sit still for three days straight without being allowed any form of sleep or respite before her complaints were utterly ignored, too. She even claims to have witnessed ranch hands using physical restraints on other teenagers, all the while forcing them to perform manual labor as a form of behavior correction. She further criticized the show ‘Dr. Phil’ for backing such an institution in the first place, which essentially kickstarted her journey to raise awareness about this billion-dollar troubled teen industry as a whole.
Danielle Bregoli is Now Bhad Bhabie, a Professional Rapper
Danielle Bregoli caught the attention of music manager Adam Kluger in early 2017, who promptly signed her. Shortly following this, she released her first-ever single, “These Heaux” on August 24, 2017, under the name Bhad Bhabie. The success of this song — it reached #77 on the Billboard Hot 100, making her the youngest female rap artist to debut on the chart — soon led her to land a multi-album contract with the esteemed Atlantic Records. Then came her remixes, a few additional original singles, collaboration with other artists like YBN Nahmir, Rich the Kid, Lil Yachty, and Ty Dolla $ign, plus her debut mixtape ’15.’
Although Danielle had pleaded guilty to grand theft, marijuana possession, and filing a false police report in 2017 in exchange for five years of probation, her sentence was concluded in March 2018. However, her legal troubles were far from over as she allegedly threw her drink at and attempted to assault rapper Iggy Azalea in November of the same year, months after her mixtape’s release. Thankfully, things didn’t escalate much further back then, but she did end up attending rehab for childhood trauma as well as addiction to prescription medication in June of 2020 for around 31 days.
By this point, though, Danielle had also broken several records through more song releases, done an endorsement deal with Copycat Beauty, as well as launched her own reality show, ‘Bringing Up Bhabie.’ There were a few more hiatuses and public feuds along the way, but then she came back with a bang as she announced her decision to establish her own record label, Bhad Music, in September 2020. As per Bhad Bhabie’s own accounts, she plans to release her debut EP or album through her own label quite soon — it’s been a while (2021) since she shared new music with the world, but she is working on it.
Danielle “Bhad Bhabie” Bregoli Prioritizes Her Family Today
Though Danielle and her mother had more than their fair share of differences back in 2016, they have since managed to reconnect in such a way that they are now able to communicate openly. It likely started when they sued three organizations for infringing the former’s “intellectual property rights” by using her signature catchphrase without consent while also threatening to sue Walmart for the same. This arguably opened the door for them to really get to know one another.
Therefore, today, the mother-daughter duo do their best to spend as much quality time together as possible while offering their unwavering support to each other. However, what’s even more important to note is that Danielle’s family has since expanded — this Boynton Beach, Florida, resident is now a proud single mother of a daughter. She welcomed Kali Love into this world in March 2024 with fellow online personality Le Vaughn, with whom she had been involved since 2020. The two seemed madly in love, with the rapper even tattooing his name on her upper chest.
However, they reportedly parted ways in May following some alleged domestic troubles. Nevertheless, it’s evident that her family—mostly her mother and daughter—is her priority these days, and she has long since launched an OnlyFans account to help support them. Danielle has done all this of her own free will, so she’s perfectly content to continue down this path, which is all that matters in the long run.
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