How did Lil Baby lose $8 million in one day?
Lil Baby has made a lot of money on the back of his rap career, but, famously, riches can come with their problems. People can become derailed by sudden injections of cash, which is exactly what happened to him.
Lil Baby rose to prominence in 2017, when he released four mixtapes throughout that single year. His debut album followed in 2018, with his second album, My Turn, arriving in 2020 and achieving a huge level of success. It went straight to number one and finished the year as the best-selling album of 2020. It has since been certified as seven-times platinum.
The popularity of My Turn brought Baby a lot of attention and a lot of money. Music sales might not be what they used to be in this age of streaming, but a best-selling album still brings with it plenty of cash. Lil Baby became a very rich young man.
But with his newfound wealth, Lil Baby started to make some bad decisions. He started to gamble his money, and that duly became a problem. He lost insane sums of money to the habit, as he admitted during an appearance on the A Safe Place podcast in 2024.
Asked what his worst ever loss was, his response was staggering. “$8 million,” he said. “Like one day, probably like 40 hours straight, I lost like $8 million, $9 million.”
It seems almost unthinkable that a person could end up losing that amount of money on making bets, but, clearly, things had spiraled totally out of control. Following that multi-million dollar loss, Baby came to see how bad things had gotten.
He claimed on the podcast that, after the big loss, he “made” himself stop gambling. But he didn’t do it alone, as he turned to a business partner, Michael Rubin, for help.
“I had Mike Rubin write a letter to every casino and ban me from the casino,” Baby said. “I just do shit. I don’t gamble no more.”
Following the revelations of how bad his gambling habit had been, none other than 50 Cent responded with shock at Baby’s losses. Calling him “crazy” on an Instagram post, 50 joked that he “thought only Floyd [Mayweather] do shit like that.” Mayweather, too, is known for placing big bets.