WHAM - Lil Baby: Review
Lil Baby is an Atlanta rapper whose music I've never particularly cared for. I have stuck my neck out twice to at least pay him a little bit of love on a pair of collaborative projects. That included his breakthrough Drip Harder alongside Gunna in 2018 and his album The Voice Of The Heroes alongside Lil Durk a few years later. But as far as his own studio albums go I can't say I've enjoyed any of them a bit. Hit completely flavorless style and AI-generated lyricism almost do enough to mask just how unpleasant his voice is to listen to, almost. But on WHAM he takes a risk or two that pays off, not enough to make the album good but enough to make it marginally more enjoyable than some of his others.
This is gonna be a quick review, because if you've ever heard any Lil Baby music before you already know exactly what most of this album sounds like. Let me bring up some of the highlights though. "Dum, Dumb, And Dumber" has been one of the breakthrough hits and it's easy to see why with the track being Young Thug's first new verse since the end of his trial. Honestly, it's a banger and even though Thugger and Future handily outclass Baby the song still has a lot of momentum and building intensity that makes it hit hard.
Speaking of great features GloRilla shows up on "Redbone" and continues to prove that she simply cannot miss recently. Even Lil Baby himself occasionally comes through with something more interesting than usual. "F U 2x" features some more up-tempo flows that are actually maintained for more than a second to two. "Stiff Gang" is even better and it comes out of nowhere with sizeable intensity right out of the gate and manages to keep it up throughout.
Unfortunately, this album also has the exact same shortcomings of nearly every other Lil Baby project. "Stuff" is a track I wanted to like because Travis Scott appears on it and the beat is pretty trippy but the hook is an utter disaster and the refrains feel borrowed from a dozen other Travis Scott songs. Lil Baby hooks have always been rough but a few tracks on this record, "I Promise" and "Say Twn" in particular, may be some of his very worst yet.
"By Myself" is the worst song on the album where Lil Baby, Rylo Rodriguez, and Rod Wave have an absolute shootout for who can sing the worst. Rylo wins in the end but Baby isn't too far behind. The opening track "Listen Up" also suffers vocally. It tries to be a dramatic start to the record but Lil Baby can't go more than 10 seconds without saying something stupid. Even worse is that he can't sing and his handling of the second half of the track is a disaster.
WHAM may be ever so slightly better than some previous Lil Baby albums. With a much thinner tracklist and a few genuine highlights, the album doesn't feature the long dreary slogs of complete slop that have sank nearly all of his other studio records. So within that microcosm, this may be a marginal improvement, however, Lil Baby continues to be one of the least interesting voices in all of hip-hop. His continued massive popularity astounds me, even if there's a track or two on this record I wouldn't mind lingering on the charts. 3.5/10
For more hip hop check out my review of Metro Boomin & Future's We Don't Trust You
