After a rigorous entry process into Lil Baby’s Hollywood recording studio, the Los Angeles Times sat down with the Atlanta rapper to discuss the meaning behind his music and what inspires it.
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No doubt, with the pandemic, the day to day has changed for Lil Baby as artists have been locked out of clubs, tours and festivals. However, he’s pushed through, and kept on creating tracks, one of which has landed him two GRAMMY nominations for Rap Performance and Rap Song.
“The Bigger Picture,” like many songs in it’s genre this year, speaks on police and the failed justice system. Debuting in June, just weeks after the George Floyd killing, the track became a protest hit for Atlanta and the world, capturing something fans both new and old needed to hear.
“Honestly, if you’re a real fan and listen, you know ‘Bigger Picture’ is something I rap about all the time,” he said. And while winning a GRAMMY would be great and all, the thought was far from Baby’s thoughts when writing the song.
“I find it crazy the police’ll shoot you and know that you dead but still tell you to freeze,” he mournfully raps, with a steadily intensifying cadence. “I seen what I seen, I guess that mean hold him down if he say he can’t breathe.”
While Lil Baby has to look no further than todays headlines for lyrical inspiration, he is also an admitted avid reader of history. Spending hours examining transcripts and scouring YouTube to immerse himself in old speeches from Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the civil rights era.
Watching his generation’s version of that occurring right in from of him, “I wanted to be a part of it,” said Baby. “I’d seen it in history books, and now I got the chance to see it firsthand. I knew I was going to be involved.”
According to Pierre “Pee” Thomas, chief executive of Lil Baby’s label Quality Control, he knew right away that the song was much more than just a hit for the fast-ascendant rapper.
“Lil Baby dealt with the feelings pouring out of him the way he knows — he wrote raw and real,” Thomas said in an email. “There have been very few artists in music’s history who can speak a truth that a nation is feeling and help accelerate societal shifts. In his authenticity, and with those words, Baby became one of them.”
Baby’s past experiences also allow him to see the bigger picture and give him more personal reasons than many to hit the streets demanding reform. After spending two-years in prison for a spate of gun and drug charges, Lil Baby was released a changed man. “If I didn’t go through all that, I wouldn’t be able to speak on it like this,” Baby said.
And while Lil Baby’s words and actions coincided with the movement, he’s far from naive about the pace of change, but did admit the protests made him hopeful of the possibilities.
“I’m from the bottom,” he said. “Life’s different as Lil Baby, but a President Biden don’t make much of a difference where I come from. People need to see change.”
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