There’s additional production from Murda Beatz, DJ Paul, and Buddah Bless, most up to their usual tricks. Sonically, the album has the same architects as his last two solo projects: in-house QC producer Quay Global, Tay Keith, and Wheezy. But he doesn’t really have any charisma, or flavor, or personality. It isn’t that Baby underperforms in any of these duets on the contrary, he gives everything he has. Uzi is reading horoscopes on long flights and trying to spend enough money to bring Kobe Bryant back to life on “Commercial.” Baby loses a shop-off to the superior showman Future on “Live Off My Closet.” Even Baby’s best bar on “We Should” (“My Rolls Royce in the projects, they look at me like I’m God”) isn’t enough to outshine Thug’s Technicolor absurdity.
Exchanges with Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, and Future can feel like adjusting from blurriness to the clarity of corrective lenses.
His supporting cast doesn’t do him any favors. He’s trying to tell a story here, but he’s just not much of a storyteller-his bars keep the narrative going, but he doesn’t offer enough arresting imagery to make his scenes come to life. “They want me catch a murder, I ain’t goin’ back,” he vows on “Commercial.” Baby keeps glimpsing the world he left behind in his periphery, and his most evocative writing finds him in between worlds on “Same Thing,” he goes plain jane because the public associates bling with thugs, and on “Gang Signs” he returns home as a philanthropist and local legend.
#Lil baby too hard full full#
Much of My Turn concerns the familiar calls of street life and the uncertainty that comes with pursuing a rap dream at full tilt. “I never call myself a G.O.A.T., I leave that love to the people,” he hedges on “Emotionally Scarred,” a claim that seems to contradict the album’s baby goat-covered artwork. He is ready to embrace his notoriety, albeit cautiously. The album is only saved by his minor improvement as a songwriter and lyricist. There are songs called “ Solid” and “ Consistent” here, and that tells you almost everything you need to know. His mellow, lilting raps have poise, but when they lock into a groove they lose all momentum. Where Thug is explosively unpredictable, Baby is reliably inert. Lil Baby is like the inverse of Young Thug. The album title’s message is obvious: He is stepping into his star moment, but while his songs are pleasantly steady and well-balanced, he still has yet to really command attention on his own. After releasing seven projects in two years, the Atlanta artist took a year off and returns on his new album My Turn as something approaching a marquee act. Before 2016, he’d never rapped a word, but after serving a two-year prison sentence, he decided to give it a try, thanks to the prodding of Quality Control executives Coach K and Pierre “Pee” Thomas and his former classmate Young Thug, who paid him to leave his hood and go to the studio. Lil Baby fell backward into music and made the most of it.
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