Lately the main rappers that I’ve been listening to have been Lil Baby and Gunna from Atlanta. They’re part of the post-Young-Thug, post-Future autotune sing-rapping movement that’s gotten super popular in recent years. I got into Gunna first through some of his cameo’s with Young Thug and then discovered Lil Baby through him. Nowadays Lil Baby seems to be at the top of the game, including having two features from noted culture-watcher (or vulture depending who you ask) Drake. This song Money Forever is not one of his most popular, but it’s one of my favorites. It combines the casual, woozy but rhythmically tight sing rapping with a beautiful beat by Quay Global, who also produced Baby’s breakout hit My Dawg. Quay’s beats are some of my favorite that Baby raps on, the two have a great musical chemisty. Life Goes On, with Gunna again and featuring Lil Uzi Vert, is another very strong track by them together.
A lot of Atlanta trap music can take on a menacing, downbeat quality but Baby, Gunna and Quay together have a great ear for kinetic, bounce flavored and uplifting instrumentals which provide a rich bed for their melodic vocals. The result is full of energy and feels good to listen to. I assume that many folks reading this site are not hardcore hiphop fans and so I always feel a bit weird talking or writing about hiphop to an audience who are not already fans. To a huge degree, like any genre based artwork hiphop is intensely contextual and defined in relation to other adjacent work, so it can be hard to understand the mesh of cultural references that make something unique or interesting to insiders. For many people, modern hiphop will be alienating with it’s intense materialism, violence, glorification of drug abuse and misoginy. This is of course a valid response and I’m not here to convince anyone to enjoy it or to argue in favor of it’s values. On the other hand, I grew up with this music and have been listening and following it through a significant part of it’s lifetime and mine and it’s a big source of pleasure for me.
I grew up in New York, but I was always upper middle class and was never truly immersed in the conditions from which hiphop arose (poverty, racism and systemic exclusion). So what does it mean for a 39 year old white man like me? And why do I like it so much? For me I think there are a few key emotional takeaways from gangsta rap music, and I imagine these are true for some others as well. First, the aggression in the music is cathartic and a way for us to inhabit and to some degree feel or express emotions like anger and violence in a context which is social acceptable. I watched an interview with Scottish battle rapper Loki (who is himself a brilliant leftist thinker, a surprising person) and he explained that rap music was only one of the contexts where he was allowed to express anger. There is also in the ‘fuck you, I do what I want’ attitude of gangsta rap an opportunity to vicariously escape from the complex forces which entrap and enclose us in modern life. Most of us cannot just do whatever we want, but the idea that maybe we could, and that someone out there is, is somehow reassuring. I find also in rap music an attitude of resilience and a call to struggle and overcome. This should be unsurprising to anyone familiar with the experience of Black people in America. For me, facing my own much less serious struggles in life, I find the relentless unwillingness to give up embodied in the music encouraging and valuable. To my ears, for all it’s talk of designer clothes, women and drugs, this music is about triumph over adversity through personal determination, a message I find valuable.
Money Forever, Verse 3: Lil Baby
I used to sleep on the floor for a mattress
https://genius.com/Lil-baby-money-forever-lyrics
Getting evicted, that shit was embarrassing
My mama didn’t have it, we made us a palettes
I had to share with the roaches and rats
Keep gettin’ money these voices keep telling me
I went to prison, it made me a better me
I can’t get no job, I got too many felonies
I been on probation since I was like seventeen
I done got me some stripes in the hood like a referee
I used to walk into school with that fire on me
I’m gettin’ money, ain’t really got time to beef
I don’t know why these lil bitches be lyin’ on me
I’m the jungle forreal where them lions be
I’m goin’ apeshit, they callin’ me Willy B
These niggas be sayin’ they gon’ rob me but we’ll see
I’m gon’ make every nigga with ’em fear me
