Latest Release
- MAY 3, 2024
- 3 Songs
- KIRK · 2019
- Baby on Baby · 2019
- Baby - Single · 2019
- BLAME IT ON BABY (DELUXE) · 2020
- Baby on Baby · 2019
- Blank Blank · 2018
- BLAME IT ON BABY · 2020
- BLAME IT ON BABY · 2020
- Point Em Out - Single · 2024
- GHETTO SUPERSTAR: (THE INTRO) - Single · 2024
Essential Albums
- In the video for “Walker Texas Ranger,” Charlotte, North Carolina, MC DaBaby sports a weathered leather jacket and a cowboy hat while he drives a pickup truck clear off a cliff. This, along with the clip for “Suge,” where he can be seen dancing in a mail carrier’s uniform (“Pack in the mail, it’s gone”) and donning fake bodybuilder muscles, has led rap fans of a certain age to liken him to animated superstars past like Ludacris and Busta Rhymes. But to let DaBaby tell it, this innate wackiness is as much a part of him as the tattoos and jewelry he sports. “I'm not too serious for myself,” he told Apple Music’s Ebro ahead of the release of KIRK. This album comes seven months after Baby on Baby, the rapper’s breakout project and home to the aforementioned “Walker Texas Ranger” and “Suge.” “A lot of n*ggas are too serious for themselves, and that's not even them behind closed doors or off camera. As consumed as your time is in a business like this, being yourself got to be the smartest thing a person could do.” KIRK might be more DaBaby than he’s ever been: On “INTRO,” he gets deep into his family history, speaking candidly about losing his father in the midst of his rise. It’s a theme he revisits on “GOSPEL,” a song featuring straight-faced verses from Chance the Rapper and Gucci Mane as well as some R&B support from Florida singer YK Osiris. As past hits would attest, DaBaby is well-equipped to carry a song by himself, but he sounds great in tandem with voices like Nicki Minaj on “iPHONE” (“DaBaby and Da Barbie,” she quips), Lil Baby and Moneybagg Yo on “TOES,” and Migos on “RAW S**T.” DaBaby’s rap style in particular features the kind of endlessly amusing non sequitur most of these artists made their names on. Every verse is a chance to show off, and is usually rooted in some kind of nonlinear storytelling. The chorus of “VIBEZ” takes listeners on an abbreviated journey through a day in the life. “She wanna fuck with me but I don’t got the time/I just hopped off a private plane and went and hopped on 85/Go call my chauffeur, bitch, ’cause I don’t like to drive/We in Suburbans back to back and we gon’ fill em up with vibes.” An aim to come off well as a rapper is something the MC does not take lightly but is also, as DaBaby would claim, just another facet of who he is. “I let the music take me there, but at the end of the day, I'm just not no dumb n*gga,” he tells Ebro. “I can walk into a building and have a conversation with somebody that went to school for 10 years and not miss a beat. And have them on the same frequency I'm on. And vice versa. Then, I go in the hood and talk to any n*gga in the hood. I'm just a versatile person. And I got the brains to be able to play around with words.”
- “Walker Texas Ranger,” the standout single from DaBaby’s 2018 Blank Blank album, is also present on Baby on Baby. It's a stellar example of the Charlotte native’s appeal—the rapper’s husky delivery weaves in and out of paced bell chimes while rapping about his affinity for guns, his disdain for women with little to offer him besides their bodies, and a newfound potential for stardom. “It ain’t like Atlanta, I came out of Charlotte, that shit took me some time,” he raps. DaBaby once went by Baby Jesus, and the fact that he doesn’t take himself all that seriously is evident. Throughout a healthy stream of threats and braggadocio on “Suge,” you can hear the smirk on his face when he raps, “You disrespect me and I’ll beat your ass up all in front of your partners and children.” His choice of guests and their varying levels of fame (Offset, Rich Homie Quan, Stunna 4 Vegas) likewise says a great deal about what he values in a collaborator: MCs with energy that matches his own, and who can rap well, of course, but who also make it a point to laugh at their haters.
- 2024
- 2024
- 2024
- 2023
- 2023
Artist Playlists
- A thrilling combination of unconventional flow and bouncy trap beats.
- Look no further than these clips to see how much fun he’s having.
More To Hear
- The rapper dives deep on his album, BLAME IT ON BABY.
- The MC discusses KIRK, plus a Beats 1 Banger from Kevin Gates.
- The Charlotte MC stops in to discuss his sophomore album, KIRK.
- The New York DJ drops the Monday Motivation Mix, plus DaBaby.
- The North Carolina MC gives the scoop on the video for “Suge."
More To See
- 8:59
- 2019
About DaBaby
Since picking up the microphone in 2014, Charlotte rapper DaBaby (born Jonathan Lyndale Kirk in 1991) has demonstrated a keen awareness of how to cultivate presence in the internet era, coupling his bounciest tracks (“Suge,” “Walker Texas Ranger,” “Goin Baby,” “Baby Sitter”) with outrageous videos, crafting a persona by turns rude, violent, goofy, and dead serious. (His energy—he often sounds like he literally can’t wait to get on a track—can be so charismatic and infectious that you forget he’s rapping about how he’s prepared to mow down everyone in his way.) After a string of mixtapes, including eight released in 2017 and 2018 alone, he signed with Interscope in early 2019, releasing his first studio album, Baby on Baby, within a few months.
- HOMETOWN
- Charlotte, NC, United States of America
- BORN
- December 22, 1991
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap