DaBaby

First things first, this nigga DaBaby cannot wait to rap. Seriously. Every song starts at a crazy pace because the second the beat drops Baby is rapping. You know that feeling you get when you text someone you like and they text RIGHT back? That’s what Baby On Baby feels like. DaBaby can’t wait to rap and it comes off hella earnest. Every Baby song starts with a sprint to the Beat - it’s like watching people run into Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving. DaBaby doesn’t waste bars, everything he says has a purpose; he really wants you to know that he’s funny and that he will shoot the shit out of you. Seriously, this nigga is hilarious and he’s killed people (out of self-defense). That’s like the perfect combination for an up and coming rapper. Now some people might be uncomfortable with the fact that a murder makes him seem more “legitimate”, but in my eyes he’s making the best out of a bad situation. He lives a life where niggas will try to kill him occasionally -best thing he can do is rap about it. DaBaby reminds me of a 90’s action star; he never starts trouble but he will finish it and give you a funny one liner. Hopefully he can leverage this rap career into becoming the next Schwarzenegger - actually he’s hella short so he might be able to finesse his way into being the next Stallone. If Common can go from rapping about love for Deaf women to selling Cell Phones, DaBaby can be an Action Star. My biggest fear is that someone might really try to take him out before he really has his chance to shine. Seriously every other week there’s a story about DaBaby getting into an altercation where he knocks someone out. He’s like hip-hops One Punch Man. My fear is that one day he’ll run into someone that he can’t beat up or shoot so he’ll get shot or arrested. I really hope he doesn’t go out like that.

Baby on Baby goes by in a blur - it is 30 minutes long but it feels like it’s 10. Seriously, this tape goes by faster than time when you’re late in the morning. By the time I figured out what DaBaby was rapping about the song was over. So I would like that in the future he slowed himself down a bit, let us sit and enjoy the fact you shot that one person and got your dick sucked by that other person. There’s no need to rush! We have all day! But then again, the pace of each song is frantic, so I feel like if this tape was 2 songs longer we would’ve heard DaBaby pass out in the booth. Literally, I feel like we would’ve heard the thump of him collapsing in the booth, but knowing DaBaby he’d pass out on beat. This is a lot of content in a short period of time - it gave me flashbacks to college cram sessions before midterms, except this time I don’t have Adderall or the hope that my liberal arts degree will change my life. If I had to think of any other criticism, I’d say that Baby On Baby doesn’t really have a radio single. It’s not that he swears too much, it’s more that nothing he says is catchy enough to get stuck in your head. It’s wack but no matter how much buzz or hype a rapper has they still need one song that ear worms into people’s heads and becomes a part of the lexicon for a few days. Say what you will about Thotiana (it’s trash), but that joint is catchy as hell and its propelled Blueface’s career into a place his offbeat (but fire) raps wouldn’t have done on their own. So with that said, DaBaby can keep knocking people out in designer stores and spitting on annoying fans, but he really needs to get that one annoying radio single to push him over the edge.

If you told me 10 years ago that I would be hype to hear a rapper who used to wear a giant pamper rap, I would’ve stopped smoking weed and went to crack; this is not what 20-year-old me would have expected to be into at 30. To be fair though 20-year-old me thought I would be a movie director married to my highschool crush so he wasn’t the smartest. However, I digress, I’m here now in full support of DaBaby and I am telling you to do DaSame. Baby On Baby is fun - definitely give it a spin when you get a chance. I give it 7.5 Pull Ups out of 9.

DaBaby mixes only about 30 percent of his old previous autotune style into his flow on “Taking It Out.” I believe starting out, he did like other artists and followed the Young Thug way of rapping, but on this album especially, he lets his raw voice loose – a raspy timbre replete with regional accent and not burdened by any digital gimmickry. “Taking It Out” by its title could mean so many things, from a gun to a body part, but I in fact like both the specifics and the ambiguity of what DaBaby is talking about; “I'm thinking about taking it out / it's hard to pop shit with my grill in / I can't let it fuck up my flow / let these lil' niggas run up the score and I still win.” He paints the type of scenario I can see and believe in – describing that before he gets busy, either physically or verbally, he has to take out his diamond/gold grill from his mouth. Is poppin’ shit about fighting, or is it about poppin’ off at the mouth, and is the flow his cashflow or his rap flow? The wordplay allows for two meanings – and this is a great introduction to the North Carolinian rapper and his intention to not just be another flavor of the month. Another major element about DaBaby is that his beats all tend to stick to the same script, following a twisted nursery song melody line (bells, xylophones, discordant piano notes) and generally being pretty sparse and in the background enough to allow for his voice to star as the main attraction. Many of these sound to me very similar to a Yo Gotti track like “Rake It Up” – and while I generally enjoy most of the beats on the album, it does become hard to differentiate between them. I would have enjoyed more variety at the end of the day, but individually, a track like “Suge” is ridiculously fun to listen to, with a bratty bounce to it and awesome boasts; “I'm the type to let a nigga think that I'm broke / until I pop out with a million (I pop) / take 20K and put that on your head / and make one of your potnas come kill you (Yeah).” All the while, his real voice comes in loud and clear – where so many other rappers his age choose to go the melodic root behind layers and layers of processing.

After the similar boasts and tempos displayed on “Goin Baby” and “Pony”, I welcomed the change of pace on “Deal wit It” which is swift and contains a certain exciting energy level, which is also maintained on “Walker Texas Ranger” and “Joggers”, especially when Rich Homie Quan hops on the latter beat with a growling, almost shouting delivery. I can’t help but get hyped to these joints, yet no beat, and perhaps flow, is more engaging for me than on “Baby Sitter”, from the insane ad libs which often laugh maniacally at the lyrics, which are themselves off the hook and delightfully disrespectful, seesawing between talking about the opp’s baby momma to her kids to the opp’s own demise at DaBaby’s hands. He plays with his name brand by telling the guys to not let girls take pictures with him because he is enough of a seducer that he can end up fucking the baby sitter (get it – he’s the baby), but it all makes sense to those involved – folks like Offset who provides a different swag with a smooth as hell triplet rap verse. I like his hardcore lines about using the special lady in question to set up a rival; “You gotta fuck on an opp and get 'em painted, earn it (stripes, woo).” My impression is girls who respond to this music the most really would be turned on by the thought of helping out in some gangland set up – it seems to happen a lot in the game and another reason why rappers always rap that they can’t trust hoes. This song has the most bounce to it out of any song on the album Baby On Baby.

As there are certainly some pretty solid tracks on here, there are some skippers to, which I would say are the immature and slightly annoying “Best Friend”, the surprisingly muddy sounding “Tupac”, the non distinctive sound of “Backend” (though DaBaby’s flow switch up mid song does sound pretty dope), and the tropical “Celebrate” whose autotune is kind of been-there-heard-that for me. The spooky flute style on “Pony” and ‘Carpet Burn” do satisfy though, especially because these two tracks are pretty distinct from each other even with some instrumentation in common. I don’t know why but I like “Pony” for the line “gave the plug to my brother in the trap, still rollin'”, because it seems authentic that now after hustling and marketing himself as a rapper, garnering fans and money, he is doing the smart and realistic thing by phasing out of street life, but of course, hands his mini empire to his brother because the brother is still in that life, and so why not prosper. I likewise and mesmerized by the brutal honesty and humor of the sex track “Carpet Burn”’s lyrics; “I send a ho to get some cheesecake on some Puff shit (Ha) / I'll beat and fuck in front your kid / I'm on some sick shit (He sick).” Nasty, sure, but messages like these do garner the desired response – and that Puff line is priceless for all of us fans of the Dave Chapelle skit. DaBaby manages to be funny even when he’s being filthy.