The reason why Lil Baby quit drinking lean
Lean has been popping up more and more in hip hop music over the last decade.
It’s particularly prominent in trap music, and among new age rappers like Lil Baby, so much so that back in 2018, he had to announce he was quitting the drink. In an interview on May 8th, he said, “I used be on lean heavy, live five, six ounces a day”. He explained that the addiction quickly started to take a toll, adding, “That shit start fucking with me. Like, reading different, talking different, feel different, like everything”.
Lil Baby even noted that lean was affecting his physical appearance, saying that since he’d stopped consuming the drug, he’d lost weight. “At like two months of not drinking lean, I lost 20 pounds. That shit serious”, he reported.
Lean, also known as ‘purple drank’ and ‘sizzurp’, is a drink combining codeine (cough syrup, an opioid), soda, and candy. It has a sweet taste and sedative effects, and has become popular as an accessible, recreational drug in the hip hop community. Artists like Lil Wayne, Young Thug, Future, and A$AP Rocky have all rapped about lean, with Yung Lean even adopting his stage name from it.
Lil Baby’s battle with lean started when he was 13, the same age that he began hanging out on the streets. At the height of his addiction, he was spending $20,000 a month on the drink. Soon, lean was more than a social tool and form of escapism for the rapper, it was a crutch to cope with stress and trauma.
The dangers of lean are well-documented, mostly because it can easily be created from over-the-counter products in the US. People who consume lean experience dizziness, slowed heart rate and breathing, hallucinations, and impaired vision, as well as tending to slope to one side, which is where the drink gets its name from. The chronic use of lean can lead to seizures, kidney failure, liver damage, dental decay, and death.
Lil Baby’s declaration to be lean-free came as he was promoting his debut album, Harder Than Ever. At the time, he posted on Twitter (now X) the hashtag #HealthIsWealth. His actions showed that he was prioritising his wellbeing and music over a potentially fatal habit that he’d struggled with for years.
The same year that Lil Baby went sober, Chicago rapper Fredo Santana died. He was 27 years old and had been hospitalised due to kidney and liver failure linked to his high lean use. Lil Baby didn’t know Santana personally, but the news hit the hip hop community hard and served as a caution to those who were drinking lean regularly and glamorising it in their music.
While on his journey to sobriety, Lil Baby spoke about how lean was romanticised in rap music and how choosing to quit the drink was almost countercultural. He also admitted that he had rapped about drugs in his music that he had never taken, highlighting the hypocrisy of artistic persona and reality. There was (and still is) pressure to maintain a certain image and lifestyle that can be damaging to artists and audiences, yet both sides strive to embody it.
Lil Baby’s story acts as a reminder that recovery is possible and necessary in hip hop. More rappers have shared their journeys through addiction, and as a new cultural evolution unfolds, hopefully, more people (famous and otherwise) will avoid addictive substances altogether.