In his newest album “My Turn,” Lil Baby touts his hard work as the key to his success. After taking a year off music, Baby comes back to the rap game stating that it is his time to shine. What he may not know is that hard work isn’t the only key to success — he needs artistic depth, too. While Baby tried to show his path into the rap game he misses the mark on telling his own story. Baby falls into the typical rap trap and just flaunts his wealth and ability to get women. While the album tries to state that it is his moment to shine, it lacks quite a bit of inspiration.
Lil Baby got into music in Atlanta, Georgia. He was encouraged by executives at Quality Control, Pierre Thomas, or Pee and Kevin Lee, known as Coach K or Coach. He also was heavily influenced by Young Thug who was his meal ticket into the music business. Lil Baby, for better or worse, is often compared to Young Thug because of this connection. This seems like a bit of a disservice to Young Thug — Baby’s music lacks the creativity and originality in his tone that Thug has in his music.
“My Turn” is monotonous and repetitive. Every track follows a similar pattern of looped melodic sample mixed so low it’s barely audible, an assault of high hats in a seemingly arbitrary sequence and kicks and bass that is turned up so high it is difficult for this album to present itself as more than a cacophony of basic trap beats.
Vocally, Lil Baby continues to disappoint. The auto-tune that is used in this case can take away from Baby’s vocals. Natural Baby doesn’t put in a lot of enunciation into his tracks. His past mixtapes show an affinity for mumble rapping. The way that this auto-tune is layered on can make Baby sound robotic throughout the album. While his lyrics have seen some growth, the impact is diminished because of the pitchy vocals. Baby also has an issue with variety, while he has released a lot of music, it doesn’t have any difference in emphasis in what he says. A large problem when it comes to relating to what he has to say. He tends to focus on a repetitive rap story of coming from nothing.
What Lil Baby does best is take advantage of the commercial market. The feature heavy album has many big names. The issue with having so many features is that Baby’s rapping can mimic the cadence of whoever he is rapping with. In the song “Live Off My Closet (feat. Future),” his style of flow is similar to that of Future, staccato rap verses, auto-tune and adlibs. By Future’s verse, Lil Baby has made the sound redundant. The same could be said about “We Should (feat. Young Thug).” When both rappers sing on the track it can be hard to distinguish the two, between the similar stories they rap about along with the autotune, this track continues to add redundancy to the album.
The hour run time leaves the listener staring at the clock waiting for it to end. The tracks blur together because of the melodic loops and 808s that seem to be repeated throughout. The songs tend to sound more like filler because of the lack of narrative in Baby’s tracks. If Baby can find a way to add a story into his music then there is a good chance that he can move past the commercial rap and create something with more depth.