Together, they form a formidable duo with the cool, collected poise of OutKast and the captivating magnetism of, say, Kris Kross. Lil Baby’s muzzled, crocodilian-croak - at times neck-busting, at times shoulder-strutting - bursts through beat pockets with the strength and unpredictability of a cannonball. Gunna’s silky, tip-toeing flows cultivate a magic-Maison-Margiela carpet ride over whichever beat he chooses to glide through. Gunna and Lil Baby mark significantly different genetic phenotypes - and therefore, delineations - from the Young-Thug root of their phylogenetic tree. But the artists in question today, Gunna and Lil Baby, are two disciples of Young Thug - the godfather of slime. Any students of post-Soulja - fine-art philosophers such as Gucci Mane, Future or any other Atlanta-based linguistic liaisons - get my co-sign. I, for one, love Soulja Boy, and everything rap has become in his post-world-wide-web wake - “Crank That” hangs in the foyer of my mind. Simply put - I am in the process of collecting nostalgia, and rap will certainly play a part in my mental time capsules. I will be young for a little while longer, and the wealth of music I listen to now will someday make me yearn for the good old days. Exhibit A - “Sold Out Dates” by Gunna and Lil Baby, the greatest song of our generation, and of all time. Here, in 2020, some people assert that rap - in its modern form - is a dying art.
![lil baby too hard playlist lil baby too hard playlist](https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-f37BcytexqKF-0-t500x500.jpg)
Soulja Boy responded in a now-infamous video, making a claim that reigns true to this day - “the reality of it is, the game has changed.” And that’s the truth - 13 years ago, the game had changed, and it will always continue to do so. Specifically, Ice T claimed Soulja Boy had “single-handedly killed hip-hop.” That’s a pretty audacious claim - no one man could have all that power. After Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” blew up in 2007, some self-proclaimed “hip-hop purists” had something to say. No disrespect intended, but there’s a reason why “old head” is commonplace terminology in pop culture discourse - and specifically in hip-hop discourse. “I feel like I’m past that stage.Ice T is old. “I don’t wanna be comin’ from where I come from all the way right here to be a nothin’,” he told Apple Music around the release of My Turn. By the end of 2020, he’d been nominated for a Grammy, made the chart-topping album My Turn, and was named Artist of the Year at the Apple Music Awards. (Young Thug, an early booster, paid him to spend time in the studio instead of the streets.) Compared to his Atlanta peers (Thug, Gunna, Migos, etc.), Baby’s persona was muted: He shrugged off fashion shows, didn’t have tattoos (he didn’t want potential business partners from the buttoned-up, white world thinking he was something he wasn’t), and kept his boasts mild: “I never call myself a G.O.A.T./I leave that love to the people,” he raps on “Emotionally Scarred.” But the lyricism was there, as were the low-key intensity and no-frills ethic that have become his hallmark. Then the work came fast: Within a year of starting to rap, he’d released six mixtapes and a full-length album, 2018’s Harder Than Ever. But two years on a possession charge gave him more time to think than he wanted. He’d had encouragement-Pee and Coach K, the Atlanta kingmakers/Quality Control heads who helped launch Migos, had been on him since he was a teenager hustling dice in the street-but Baby wasn’t interested. The story goes that Lil Baby (born Dominique Jones in 1994) didn’t even really want to rap.