How Did Lil Baby Become Hip Hop’s Best Artist?

Alex Edmonds
3 min readMay 1, 2020

Back again. This time I’m talking about something completely unrelated to athletics. Because for all we know, sports will never be back again.

Today I’m talking about the best artist in the game. And no, it’s not Lil Uzi, it’s not Drake, it’s not Slim Jesus… it’s Lil Baby.

Dominique Jones is his real name, but if you want to show him respect, call him Lil Baby. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m a day one Baby fan. His earlier projects were decent, but obviously he’s on a whole different level now. I remember hearing his flow on “Drip Too Hard” and I thought he just sounded like a wannabe Young Thug. Now with that said, I was still a fan of the song, and I would have liked it even more if Gunna wasn’t featured on it.

It was after “Drip Too Hard” when I started diving more into Baby’s music. Some of his older songs, I just can’t get enough of. “Throwin Shade” and “How Life Goes” are other classics to name a few. Just from listening to his few projects, you can tell that the dude has exceptional talent when it comes to making hooks. Better than that, his flow is the best in the entire rap game.

Leading up to the release of “My Turn” Baby had released some great tracks like “Woah” and “Sum 2 Prove.” And yeah, I like the song “Woah.” I don’t have a Tik Tok, but I can still enjoy that song.

“Sum 2 Prove” is where I really started to get excited for this album. Baby was spittin on this track, and as a white male, I relate to many of his bars throughout the song. When he said, “They don’t want to see us on TV unless it’s the news,” that really hit home for me. It’s been a struggle growing up in Portland.

On the real, Baby’s new album is the best project I’ve heard this year, and I don’t think anyone will come close to topping it. Dude sounds like he’s on a mission with some of these hits. More importantly, every song on this album has replay value. There’s a few songs that I don’t particularly love, but every one of them has some bop in it. Especially towards the middle of the album when he hits us with Woah, and then every song after that, all the way through to “Forever” with Lil Wayne. Every single one of those tracks has “hit record” potential.

And then as far as my favorites on the album, “Live Off My Closet” and “Emotionally Scarred” are probably my top two songs. I recently listened to “Live off my closet” in the car for the first time and that shit is hard. It’s the ultimate bump in the whip song. And I could see myself playing that at my wedding.

But all in all, I’ve been playing this album on repeat since it came out, and I’m not showing any signs of switching over to Eternal Atake. Lil Baby has the streets on lock, and he’s got the rap game in his back pocket as well. I really love what this guy is doing.

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