In the sprawling family tree of 21st century Atlanta rap, Lil Baby sits in between the raw trap realists of the 2000s and the melodic wizards of the 2010s. For a stretch beginning when he left prison and devoted himself to music in 2016, the rapper born Dominique Jones became the city’s defining hip-hop star — and a global one, too — without ever bending to the forces of the greater marketplace. He was stubborn, and successful.
Lyrically dense, proudly regional songs like “Freestyle,” “My Dawg” and “We Paid” achieved anthem status in the South and beyond, while collaborations with like-minded, post-trap artists like Lil Durk, Drake and Gunna helped to broaden the coalition. In 2020, Lil Baby’s album “My Turn” out-streamed Taylor Swift’s “Folklore.”
In the years since, Lil Baby, 31, settled into a life of portfolio expansion and arena tours as one of the last rappers to achieve superstar status before the industry pendulum swung away from hip-hop. Hits have become harder to come by, while the vibrant Atlanta scene fractured due to infighting, criminal prosecution and premature deaths.
After a relatively quiet few years, Lil Baby has bounced back of late, with “Dead Fresh,” his first collaboration with the super-producer Pharrell, becoming the rapper’s first Top 40 solo hit since 2022, having reached No. 18. The song, from Lil Baby’s new album “Fresh,” out Nov. 6, marks a new tack for the artist, as he expands from his regular circle of local producers and dips into the broader pop universe.
It may be the first indicator that, after almost a decade of Atlanta-centric music, Lil Baby is prepared to pursue a new style of rap success. “Now I honestly believe I could make any kind of song,” he told Popcast, The New York Times culture chat show, in a recent interview.
Or perhaps, depending on his moods and the extra-musical forces at play, he’ll stop making music altogether. “If I can’t make hits,” Lil Baby said, “I ain’t gonna make music no more.”
In an unguarded conversation with Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, Lil Baby spoke about how fame and success can shrink your world; the plights of his generational peers; and learning to work outside of his comfort zone.
JOE COSCARELLI When you started, your autobiographical stories — what you were going through on a daily basis — were very vivid, Southern street rap. As you’ve moved further and further away from that lifestyle, how do you continue to find the motivation to tell these stories?
LIL BABY Even though I reached the heights that I reached — I’ve become a superstar, I’ve got multiple hits, I’m not in that same life — but you ever heard of, “You could take me out the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of me?” Now I don’t have to actually be there. But long as I can hear it on the phone and I actually know those people, I can still rap about it. Still can tell the story. Like, I’m rich, but I’m not rich enough for everybody. I made it out. But my friends and my family are still in the same situation, same living conditions.
JON CARAMANICA Is it unnerving for you that it’s that close? Literally one phone call away.
LIL BABY It’s definitely unnerving. It’s to the point where I tell people, to be at this level and stay sane, you have to kind of be insane.
JON CARAMANICA What is the thing about your life now that folks who are still maybe in those circumstances understand the least?
LIL BABY I know for a fact that the part that they least understand is that it’s not just me and them. Your cousin might tell you to give him $2,000. To them, they think it’s just $2,000, you got all that money. But they don’t count the 2,000 more people who need $2,000.
CARAMANICA And I imagine, it’s not just people asking you for things, but now you have responsibilities, you’ve got relationships with a whole new set of people that they maybe can’t see. Those might be taxing you in a different way, but you might not be able to share it.
LIL BABY I might be sharing it, they still just don’t understand. But it’s more so like, they don’t even want to understand that, because they only see it their way. What can I do for them? Or: “I need you to do this.”
COSCARELLI I’m interested in the motivation to keep rapping, because when you were recording those first few mixtapes, it was life or death, in some way.
LIL BABY I still feel that same way right now.
COSCARELLI You do? How do you hang onto the motivation to make the kind of rap that you make when you’ve already won?
LIL BABY You’re saying I already won. But once you win, you wanna keep winning. Then I was trying to make it out. But now I’m trying to keep what I got going. And now, what I’ve got going is extreme. So for me to keep going on this extreme level, I’m gonna have to go hard. I still remember the feeling of, “If I had a million dollars,” you know what I’m saying? And now I know the feeling that when you get a million dollars, it’s like, “this is not enough.”
COSCARELLI If you say so!
CARAMANICA Do you feel like it could go away? Do you feel like it’s precarious?
LIL BABY I don’t think my hunger, my drive could disappear. I think I’m a natural-born hustler. As far as making music, now, I don’t know.
CARAMANICA Or making hits.
LIL BABY That’s the only thing: that’s all that’s gonna be — hits. Because if I can’t make hits, I ain’t gonna make music no more.
COSCARELLI You won so much, so early. Things ebb and flow, not every record you’ve put out has been a hit. Talk to me about your mind-set in those fallow periods, especially when it comes to the public perception around you.
LIL BABY To me, I don’t have fallow periods, though. Nothing changed from that time to “Dead Fresh.” So why would I be in a slump? At the level I’m at, if I put out a hit, if I don’t put out a hit, it don’t really change for me. I’ve been doing shows. It’s not where I can feel it.
COSCARELLI So much of rap now — so much of American life — is reality TV. It’s wrestling. This churn of so-and-so responds to so such and such. How do you stop yourself from posting?
LIL BABY I don’t got a desire! One day they gon’ know the truth. I like that better than if I’m trying to explain it now, I might even type it wrong, and look even goofier, you feel me?
COSCARELLI Do you think that your reticence to post online comes from your old lifestyle of needing to be in the shadows when you were breaking the law?
LIL BABY For sure. I think that’s the start of it. But I just always felt a way about being mad at your phone. Don’t be mad at your phone!
COSCARELLI But sometimes it is real life. Whether it’s your relationship with Young Thug, your relationship with Gunna — these were your real friends and they went through something life-altering, and you were thrown into the middle of the gossip.
LIL BABY It’s 98 percent never right. I think everybody — and I say that as a whole, whether I like them or they like me — we’re all gonna be on that personal vibe. And that’s what I do commend Atlanta on, because we can not like each other, but we gonna play cool for y’all. It’s like an unspoken thing. I see people going at each other and stuff — we ain’t really on that. We got a problem, we can handle that problem off the internet, in person, just us. At the end of the day, we still for the town, for Atlanta.
COSCARELLI You made an album with Lil Durk, toured arenas together. But where your lives are at this moment could not be more different. He was just acquitted in one case, he’s facing another. What is it like to see those paths diverge? You guys made it so far from where you started, and yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t fall through the trap door.
LIL BABY I always, always felt like that. All the time, that’s what I be trying to tell people. It’s different for us, you know what I’m saying? Or for me. Even though I’m a celebrity and I’m famous, I really come from something else. I already got a different tag on my back.
COSCARELLI And you can never fully shake that.
LIL BABY I don’t see how you can fully shake it, honestly. ’Cause I don’t do nothing! I don’t live in the same places, I don’t hang in the places, I don’t do the same — it’s just, you be so embedded in those places. You shake it eventually, though. It’s still new. Ten years is a long time, but when you get about 20 years in —
COSCARELLI You see the light at the end of the tunnel.
LIL BABY I see the light, for sure. And I understand everything. I don’t feel like the police are just on rappers. It’s rappers who do [expletive] while they on us, you know I’m saying? So I get it. My whole objective and what I know is I just can’t be doing nothing.
COSCARELLI You don’t think you guys are being targeted?
LIL BABY Nah, I mean we are, but I understand — not just because we’re young, Black and getting money.
COSCARELLI It’s more complicated than that?
LIL BABY It’s way more complicated, and it’s got something to do with the actions the rappers take. Once they’re catching rappers doing certain things, we’re going to be a target.
CARAMANICA There must be some anxiety, when you see people struggling, whether it’s with legal situations, people being killed. How does that leave you emotionally?
LIL BABY It’s like every day some new [expletive]. You just go with it. God put me in a position because I can handle it.
CARAMANICA Do you feel like you put it in the records?
LIL BABY I put in the records in bits and pieces. I know if I was more vulnerable, I’d get further.
COSCARELLI There were moments at the beginning where maybe you didn’t have as much control, because it was all pouring out of you.
LIL BABY It’s like a permanent meter. You can tell by the tone of the song if I’m vulnerable. But even if I’m feeling that, it’s like a max. Not even on purpose. If I wrote, maybe I could get way deeper.
COSCARELLI The Atlanta style when you came up was punching in — recording one or two lines at a time. Have you ever sat down and written a verse?
LIL BABY Not for real. I’ll write something in my head. But it’s that way with me with everything, too. It ain’t just music — I don’t try to think too deep.
COSCARELLI Because you’re scared of what you might find? You don’t let yourself get too high or too low.
LIL BABY Ain’t gonna be too high or too low. Like when y’all were saying the slump — it’s like, if I put a song and it was the best song in the world, or I put out a song that was the worst song in the world, I never let myself get too high or too low.
COSCARELLI You told me you learned that in prison.
LIL BABY Definitely. I got to be here, but my mind is so much bigger. So I learned how to be somewhere, but not all the way.
COSCARELLI Have you done any therapy?
LIL BABY Nah, I want to, though. I had my assistant look me up a therapist. And I be asking people who went to therapy. I’m open to it. I’ve talked to people who are like me, and they told me it might not work, but I’m still open. I want to go.
I used to have people who I could talk to like a therapist, and that really helped me, you know what I’m saying? So that’s why I am not against therapy, because I’m into therapy already. I know therapy is good.
COSCARELLI But if those people have fallen away, is that because of fame, or —
LIL BABY From fame, to just time, you know, different people go through different stuff. So at the point I’m at now, I don’t really be having nobody to talk to, especially when you outgrow certain people.
COSCARELLI You feel isolated at this moment in your life?
LIL BABY Not really isolated, but to a certain extent. But I kind of always felt like that. Because it’s just certain [expletive], and it’s like, who am I gonna talk to? I could talk to somebody all day long, but who’s gonna actually understand?
COSCARELLI Talk to me about really wanting to make this album work. You have a new management team. You’re working with XO, who are affiliated with the Weeknd, which is new for you. You’re working with MrBeast, doing TikToks, you’re printing vinyl. What is it about this moment in your career where you’re ready to double down and really launch an album?
LIL BABY Because I did get in a space of, like, do you wanna do this? Like, I’ll figure something else out to do. Rap turned into more of a — what y’all say it is? Like wrestling. I ain’t sign up for that. It kind of gets real rocky. From the criminal part to the stuff they trying to do to you. It’s a lot for me.
It’s a vibe thing with me. Music is my vibe. I gotta wanna go to MrBeast, I gotta wanna to go and do a TikTok. When I’m going through a lot of stuff and I ain’t in the right mind space, it’s like I don’t even do it, you understand? So a lot of what you see now is just me coming out of a dark space that I was in.
COSCARELLI Do you think you were depressed?
LIL BABY For sure, for sure. I still be depressed. I can still put on a face. But a lot of stuff I went through is depressing — what I go through is depressing.
CARAMANICA When you are in that state of mind, do you just not leave the house?
LIL BABY That’s the crazy thing, because I gotta show up for everyone still. And I hate it, because my closest people might get it the worst, because they might be right in the midst of it. You will never know.
Credits
Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and produced by Sophie Erickson, Kate LoPresti and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Luke Piotrowski, Bernardo Garcia Elguezabal and Pat Gunther. It was edited by Mark Zemel with help from Rebecca Blandon. Our theme music is by Elisheba Ittoop. Nick Pitman is our audio engineer and Amanda Webster is our photo editor. Brooke Minters is our executive producer. Header video cinematography is by Diego Garcia.
Special thanks to Sarah Bonn, Dahlia Haddad, Mike Cordero, Nicole Huber, Aaron Byrd, Carl Mazurek, Zach Caldwell, Maddy Masiello, Brad Kimbrough, Andrew Wilcox, David Malitz, Elena Bergeron, Sia Michel, Nina Lassam and Sam Dolnick.
The post Lil Baby Still Has Ups and Downs, Even at the Top appeared first on New York Times.
