Lil Baby – It’s Only Me
For just about as long as he’s been rapping, Lil Baby has known exactly what fans have wanted to hear. From the rambling and electric non sequitur of breakout single “Freestyle”, to mock-crying on Drake collaboration “Yes Indeed”, to the way his gruff and always to-the-point bar delivery counterbalanced the pain-inspired melody of Lil Durk across their Voice of the Heroes project—rare is the Lil Baby miss. On his third official album, It’s Only Me, Baby takes great pains to maintain this accuracy. There’s a heap of producers on It’s Only Me who’ve yet to really stake their claim as big-ticket collaborators, but the most recognisable (Wheezy, Murda Beatz, Tay Keith, SEVN Thomas) are certified hitmakers. The production across the project is largely skittering and urgent, the exception being the woozy and ominous horror-movielike score beneath Jeremih collaboration “Stop Playin”. Throughout, Baby is rapping like he’s pressed to rid himself of a gaggle of old rhyme books, depositing the best of their contents on record. And the MC is clearly still one of the best slick talkers out there. Though most of the project’s songs veer in and out of any singular topic, couplets like the following from “Waterfall Flow” show Baby’s ability to efficiently and effortlessly embody the two most essential components of rap superstardom—men wanting to be you and women wanting to date you: “You gon’ have to pick a side, come here, let me pick your mind/You can tell me all your flaws, I’ll get someone to fix your body/She love when I thug and like when I get romantic/She wanna be gang, I got her doing our handshake.”