Atlanta, GA · trap · hip-hop

Lil Baby

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Atlanta's most bankable technician — an effortless, conversational flow that turned street reportage into stadium-scale trap without ever raising his voice.

Born Dominique Armani Jones, Lil Baby grew up in Atlanta's Oakland City neighborhood, raised by his mother and two sisters after his father left when he was two. He dropped out of high school in ninth grade and turned to drug dealing, which led to a two-year prison stint before he began recording.

Quality Control Music signed him after his release, and Young Thug and Gunna served as early mentors in shaping his style. He broke through with a run of 2017 mixtapes, including Harder than Hard and Too Hard, whose single "My Dawg" became his first Billboard Hot 100 entry.

His delivery is loose and conversational, often half-sung, and his writing tends toward plainspoken accounts of money, loyalty and the circumstances he came from.

His debut album, Harder Than Ever, reached number three on the Billboard 200 in 2018 behind the top-ten single "Yes Indeed" with Drake. That year he also released Drip Harder, a joint mixtape with fellow Atlanta rapper Gunna that produced the hit "Drip Too Hard," and the solo mixtape Street Gossip, which peaked at number two.

My Turn (2020) topped the Billboard 200 for five weeks, went quadruple platinum and ranked as the year's best-selling album. Its standalone single "The Bigger Picture," written in response to that summer's protests, drew two Grammy nominations and marked a more overtly political turn in his writing. Later albums It's Only Me and WHAM both debuted at number one.

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