Lil Baby is one of the hottest rappers in the game right now.
But before he was dominating the charts and selling out shows across the country,
the rapper ran the streets of Atlanta.
Here is a look at how Lil Baby went from being one of ATL’s most respected hustlers
to a rap star.
Lil Baby was born Dominique Armani Jones in the Oakland City neighborhood of Atlanta.
His mother was a postal worker,
who raised him and his two sisters after their father abandoned the family
when the rapper was just 2 years old.
Because of this,
Baby got involved in the streets at a young age to support himself and help out his family.
He started getting in trouble when he was still just a kid and got locked up for the first time
at age 12 for an attempted robbery.
He and a couple friends thought it would be smart to try and rob a house in their neighborhood.
But just as they were about to break in, the cops showed up out of nowhere.
They were all cuffed and questioned, but eventually arrested for burglary.
Because Baby was so young at the time of the arrest,
they couldn’t hold him in county jail.
So they sent him to juvie where he served about 10 days.
After getting out, he went back to school but was still active in the streets.
He did well in class,
but kept getting in trouble and was eventually forced to dropout of high school.
He got suspended so many times that the school wouldn’t allow him to come back.
He thought of attending an alternative school,
until realizing that he was too old and decided to just drop out instead.
So, he turned to the streets full time in order to support himself.
During this period of hustling,
Baby would get locked up a few more times for gun and drug possession.
The exact charges are not available to the public because he was a minor at the time,
but the rapper has spoken about it in interviews.
Around the same time,
Baby was building a reputation around the city as a serious hustler and gambler,
selling weed and shooting dice to make a living.
He told Rolling Stone that by 17,
he already had two condos worth around $2,000 a month and was able to afford a car,
jewelry, and anything else that he needed.
But the lifestyle also comes with its risks and Baby continued to get in trouble with the law.
Eventually, he was sentenced to probation.
Even though he did his best to keep a low profile, it’s hard to stay out of trouble forever
when your income depends on street activity.
In 2012, the rapper slipped up and got arrested for possession with intent to sell
and violating his probation.
He was offered a plea deal of 2 years,
which his lawyer begged him to take.
But he ended up firing that lawyer and got a new one,
who was able to negotiate an even better deal.
So, instead of doing two years behind bars, Baby would be sent to a six-month work program.
Baby took that deal and he was sent to the program,
but quickly realized it wasn’t what he thought it would be.
He soon found out that he’d have to serve a year, not 6 months like he’d been told.
Plus, his release was conditional and based on whether or not he passed the program.
So if he didn't pass, he'd have to repeat it over again and stay locked up until he passed.
A few days after being admitted,
Baby got into a fight with another inmate over something petty
and the other dude tried to hit him with a lock on a belt.
It was a zero-tolerance kind of place and fighting was prohibited.
So, after realizing that he couldn’t even defend himself,
Baby left the program and accepted the two-year deal he’d originally been offered.
This time he was sent to actual prison.
Thankfully he knew enough people on the inside to be comfortable,
But seeing people his own age serving multiple life sentences
made the rapper begin to rethink his choices.
When he got out, it was right back to hustling.
But he started noticing people he grew up with were making a name for themselves as rappers.
Baby grew up around artists like Young Thug and Lil Marlo,
who were both on the come up in Atlanta.
But at the time, he didn’t have any artistic ambitions, and just wanted to get in on the action.
So, he took advantage of his street network that he already built
and became the go-to plug for rappers,
selling them weed at studio sessions or taking their money in dice games.
It was around that same time he caught the attention of Coach K and Pee
from Quality Control Records, who saw potential in Baby as a rapper,
way before he even considered it.
Baby and Pee had known each other for a long time
because Baby used to rock with Pee’s homie Big.
He knew about Baby’s reputation as a hustler and started encouraging him to get in the booth.
Coach K was a veteran in the Atlanta music scene
who had helped build the careers of Atlanta’s OG rappers like Gucci and Young Jeezy,
so he also recognized Baby from events in the city.
They both took a special interest in Baby because they felt he had something special
even though he had never rapped.
Coach K used to tell Baby, you got the money, you got the swag,
you live the life that all these rappers pretend to live,
all you gotta do is put in the work and it’ll go.
But at the time,
he was making so much money in the streets it was hard for him to walk away
and try something completely new.
Thug also used to try and convince his friend to rap
and went as far as buying him studio time so he could get started.
Early on, Baby was so unsure about rapping that he had another childhood friend, Gunna,
write some of his raps for him, so he’d have something to say in the studio.
But after a while, he got used to it and started making his own music.
He quickly took to making street anthems, but the money wasn’t there right away.
His tour manager told Rolling Stone that in the beginning,
he’d book the rapper at small clubs across the South,
where he’d only get $500 to $1,000 per show
and end up spending most of that getting there and finding a place to stay.
Since he was already making good money in the streets,
Baby considered just giving up.
But Pee convinced him to invest in the long-term vision
because at least with rap he wouldn’t end up dead or in jail.
Baby took his advice and is now one of the hottest rappers in the game
and worth a cool 4 million.
It was a drug shortage that would eventually convince the rapper
to leave the streets alone for good and focus on music.
He said that there was a drought for about three weeks where he couldn’t get any more work.
So rather than wait it out and re-up,
he decided to leave drug dealing alone for good and focus on rap full time.
He took the hustle that he learned from the streets and applied it to music,
staying in the studio 24/7 to record his first project.
He dropped his debut mixtape Perfect Timing in 2017.
The project featured guest appearances from Lil Yachty, Thug, and Gunna,
which earned the rapper a lot of credit and attention in the industry.
He kept his foot on the pedal and capitalized on this new hype
by putting out even more music.
He followed up with two more mixtapes, “Harder than Hard” and “Too Hard”
both in the same year.
These projects contained the tracks “My Dawg” and “Freestyle”,
which quickly went viral and established Baby as the next hot rapper from Atlanta.
All this buzz caught the attention of not only superstars in the city
but also major artists like Drake.
He and Baby would then collaborate on the track “Yes Indeed”,
which was featured on the rapper’s debut album “Harder than Ever”.
This shot Lil Baby into the mainstream,
which is pretty crazy
considering that he was sitting behind bars in a state penitentiary less than 2 years earlier.
However, Baby didn’t forget the people who helped him blow up,
and later that year he would drop yet another collaborative mixtape
with his friend Gunna called “Drip Harder”.
This featured the track “Drip Too Hard”,
which immediately went viral and peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts.
It was also nominated for Best Rap Song at the Grammy’s
and has gone platinum over 5 times.
It seems like everything Lil Baby touches turns to gold
and he took over the rap game at a record speeds.
But with all the fame comes negative attention and in February 2019,
Baby would get arrested and mistreated by police after being pulled over for reckless driving.
The rapper whose real name is Dominique Jones
did not turn on his blinker when changing lanes at Lee Street & Ralph David Apathy BLVD
around 6 o'clock tonight.
They said he was weaving through traffic
and also speeding.
The rapper was cruising around Atlanta in an Orange Corvette.
A state trooper was stopped at a red light and claims to have witnessed Baby fail to signal
while he changed lanes and then accelerate to pass other vehicles recklessly.
The trooper then turned on his lights to get Baby to pull over,
but the rapper just sped up and began weaving in between cars at high speeds.
The trooper then got out of his car and verbally shouted at him to pull over,
which he obeyed.
A fan captured the whole thing on camera that shows Lil Baby on the ground handcuffed
with the trooper standing over him.
Why they doing to Lil Baby?
Ooh oh my gosh.
Baby was taken into custody and charged with a minor traffic violation,
but later released that day.
The incident didn’t seem to faze the rapper too much and not long after,
he dropped a quick freestyle on his social media, rapping about the incident.
First show I rocked em,
Next show Im on the way, police got my face swole,
I don't give a **** tho.
But it showed that even leaving the streets behind couldn’t save the rapper from police harassment.
Check out our previous video on rappers who ran from cops
for more info on this arrest.
Since then, Lil Baby has been on his best behavior
and even that incident ended up being just a slap on the wrist.
After surviving the streets and state prison,
a simple traffic violation isn’t gonna make you slip up.
Baby would continue to keep up with his rapid pace of dropping music
and released his second album “My Turn” in February 2020.
The album featured guest appearances from major artists like Future and Lil Wayne,
as well as up-and-coming talent like 42 Dugg,
a Detroit rapper who had just signed to Baby’s 4PF label.
“My Turn” was one of the biggest rap albums of the year
and proved that Baby’s hype was far from over.
But the rapper didn’t have long to celebrate his successful release,
as just a month later, the world would go into lock-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On May 25th, 2020
George Floyd would tragically lose his life in an incident of police brutality.
Although Baby was still focused on celebrating his last album,
he decided to speak out and released a track called “the Bigger Picture”,
where he reflected on the recent deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rashard Brooks,
and the countless other victims of police brutality.
The proceeds of the song were also donated to a variety of charitable organizations.
The track was a bit of a risky move for Lil Baby,
who was never much of a conscious rapper.
But it was successful with public
and many consider it to be one of the best tracks on the topic to be released during that period.
Baby told Rolling Stone that he felt the responsibility to speak out on the issue
because he had been a victim of police brutality in the past.
He said that in his neighborhood, it was always something regular,
but it shouldn’t be like that.
The track was so popular,
that it even earned the rapper an invite to the White House to meet with Vice president
Kamala Harris and George Floyd’s family on the first anniversary of his death.
That probably makes Baby one of the first rappers to go from prison to the White House
in less than five years.
In June 2021,
he released a collaborative album with Lil Durk called “Voice of the Heroes”,
which was respected both by fans and critics.
The colab allows Atlanta trap fans and Chicago drill fans
to come together and hear two of the biggest artists in the game rap on the same track
as other superstars like Thug, Meek Mill, and Travis Scott.
So, it’s not likely that Lil Baby will be slowing down any time soon.
What’s next for the rapper is hard to tell.
He’s already had chart-topping hits and mainstream success
without losing his respect in the streets.
He’s also created his own label and signed 42 Dugg,
one of the hottest up-and-coming street rappers in the game.
He’s also experimented with a more conscious sound
and taken meetings with the most powerful people in the world.
Not bad for a dude who never even wanted to rap in the first place.
Although it may be hard to maintain that kind of momentum forever,
Baby is in a good position to make business moves and investments
no matter what happens.
He’s got natural talent and a solid team behind him to navigate the industry.
Maybe the rapper will continue popping out billboard hits for years to come
or maybe he’ll relax and work on building his label and other investments.
Either way, Lil Baby’s transition from trap star to rap star
was nothing short of legendary
and he deserves all the credit in the world for doing so much in such a short period of time.
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