Credit: Frank Schwichtenberg

Over the last ten years, Atlanta has witnessed the undisputable rise of Lil Baby, from a local street rapper to one of the most commercially successful artists in the hip hop industry.

However, while his career seems to be settled, profitable and recognisable worldwide, Baby tells people that they still do not know who he is. In January 2025, he clarified to Complex that the online version of him is not the man who is making the music. The misconception, he identifies, is structural, generational and partially his fault.

Lil Baby, at 30, is living in Miami, where his move is not hurried. He says that he is “living 10 years ahead” and he is already planning past the stage that many fans believe he is still trapped in.

The split was intended to be represented by the simultaneous launch of WHAM and Dominique. One of them is taken as leaning into the grit and violence that people anticipate of him, the other to a more reflective and less violent side that has surfaced in the course of its age. The point of the matter, as he sees it, is that listeners do not tend to remain long enough to perceive the difference.

He acknowledges that he had not taken his audience on an emotional journey. The grind was done swiftly and publicly, whereas the personal changes occurred off-camera. He tells Complex that fans are not aware of what he has experienced and what he continues to live with.

The criticism frustrates him since it usually emerges from places he does not recognise as serious engagement. Streamers, reaction channels and viral commentators are taking over the discussion regarding his releases, with many of them being younger and acting on clicks. In these online communities, Baby identifies individuals who are not old enough to know where he is heading. Others are not even listening. They are responding to the headlines, rather than albums.

WHAM is in a way a response. Baby states categorically that he recorded the album because he wanted people to quit playing with him. Not boastfully but correctively. He is weary of reading accounts of the lives of the remote bars or half-heard conversations. Viral lines, he says, are not usually even the subject of the song. They have been reused bits of outrage or engagement. He talks directly of the anger of uttering something clearly and seeing it re-packaged as such.

The other component of the issue he concedes, is silence. Lil Baby has never been talkative, never eager to defend himself. That distance allowed speculation to fill the gaps. He laughs when he says people get everything about him wrong, because he never says anything.

In spite of it all, he states that he is not rattled as the critics would imagine. He understands that his name is a reaction in itself, and that people will complain, but continue to stream. He does not want to seek approval or fight on the Internet. The goal is not validation. It is clarity. He desires the music to speak, yet he realises that silence is no longer effective as it used to be.