Greetings once again and welcome back to my blog! This week marks the beginning of a new approach to my page where I will be covering a single artist particularly from the rap industry who I consider to be influential to the genre, or will be considered influential in the upcoming years. In these posts, I plan on noting the background and early life of the artist, their notable achievements/blow up songs, and also some personal input about the artist. To kick things off, I decided to discuss a very solid and still upcoming rapper whose name is not something you would typically associate with rap music: Lil Baby.
Dominique Armani Jones, better known as Lil Baby, was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Coming from a lower middle class family, Jones struggled in his childhood. Growing up, there was a great deal of criminal activity which influenced Jones to commit small crimes in order to “make a living” (1). Jones had no interest in academics and spent most of his early years selling illegal drugs with his friends with no intention on becoming a star. However, as 90’s rap became a major genre of the time, Jones’ friends began to make successful careers in the music industry, but ultimately, Jones believed that selling drugs was much easier. Jones was sentenced to five years behind bars for his actions yet was released only after two years after showing signs of major improvement. Once released, his childhood friend, rapper Coach K, helped lead Jones on the right path and the two developed a new music label known as ‘Quality Control’
Around the same time as the creation of Quality Control, Jones began to work on his own mixtape and in April of 2017, he dropped his debut project titled ‘Perfect Timing,’ which took the city of Atlanta by storm with Jones’ lyricism reflecting his early life in the city. Following this kickstart to his career, Lil Baby especially took off in his 2018 album ‘Harder Than Ever’ 
which featured Drake on arguably Lil Baby’s most popular songs, “Yes Indeed” (which I can remember being the first time I truly even heard about Lil Baby). Since then, Lil Baby has rose to becoming one of the best in the industry, releasing a collaborative album with Gunna in later 2018 titled ‘Drip Harder,’ and topping the charts with ‘My Turn’ in 2020 (2). He has truly shown how it is possible to turn your life around for the better, and continues to work to this day with those who helped him get back on his feet.
When I hear most Lil Baby songs today, I think back to the summer of 2018 and my Junior year of basketball season. ‘Harder Than Ever’ was one of the main albums my friends and I listened to that entire summer, and songs from that album and ‘Drip Harder’ were featured on our basketball warmup playlist; both bring back great memories that I will always cherish. As of recently, ‘My Turn’ was an incredible album that my best friend and I would listen to everyday on the way to work during the start of quarantine, which also seemed to be a simpler time. My favorite Lil Baby song is off of ‘My Turn’ and is titled “Emotionally Scared” and I would actually consider it to be one of the top songs of 2020. It combines a light flute with exquisite lyricism and captures the true feelings of Lil Baby.
Sources
(1) https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/lil-baby-35862.php
(2) https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lil-baby-mn0003353669/biography