Album Review: WHAM by Lil Baby
Lil Baby’s latest release shows it’s not even the same in green. You heard one song; you heard them all.
What makes a trap song into a trap hit? When Young Thug—Lil Baby’s mentor—kicked off the first wave of these new trap hits ten years ago, they seemed to appear almost by themselves. “Best Friend,” “Black Beatles,” “Bad and Boujee”—there was that magical moment in history when trap as a genre was both commercially successful and creatively fertile, to the extent that its 808 swing was the biggest driving force in pop music, at least in the States.
Lil Baby belonged to the last cohort of artists who came up in this magic window. His rise to Atlanta’s next big crooner happened fast and ruthlessly; for a brief moment in 2020, you could’ve claimed Lil Baby was the best active rapper in the world and gotten away with it. And then? Then came the mammoth album My Turn, followed by the much more banal It’s Only Me, which nobody really liked. Suddenly, he finds himself lumped in with Roddy Ricch, Polo G, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again: on the sidelines, where guys who never developed beyond their initial hype wait in line, while trap swiftly rotates back out of the pop mainstream. Five years ago, you could’ve said, “He’s the best rapper in the world,” and most people would’ve accepted it. Today, you could ask, “Was he ever really that good?” without much pushback.
But the answer should still be: Absolutely! In 2018, Lil Baby was scalding hot. How he transitions into triplets on the hook of “Southside,” his hook on “Drip Too Hard” with Gunna, his verse on “Sold Out Dates,” “Time” with Meek Mill, and just everything about “Freestyle”—all of it was objectively hard-hitting. He was quickly passed up the ranks, and in his breakout season, he powered through with the hunger of a monstrous young star. His verses on “Wants And Needs” for Drake and “Hurricane” for Kanye, plus the fact that he made “The Bigger Picture,” the most important BLM song of this era—are reasons why people saw so much in Baby.
Unfortunately, WHAM now follows in the exact footsteps of It’s Only Me, with expectations piled too high. Lil Baby can be a great rapper (spoiler: you are doing too much), but he’s the opposite of an “album artist.” The moment his underdog aura faded and he became just another mainstream rapper, he sat in the corner, bored and arrogant, dropping half-baked freestyle tracks that didn’t move the needle. As a personality, he doesn’t seem wildly interesting, and musically, he was only ever innovative as long as he could represent the dominant Atlanta scene. Whatever interesting stuff is happening in Atlanta right now doesn’t find a place on WHAM that sleepily delivers replicas of his now seven-year-old mixtapes at a steady pace, served up with the same five default feature guests straight from the freezer aisle.
Are there solid songs? Sure. “Dum, Dumb & Dumber” is at least fun, letting us hear a lively Young Thug freshly out of prison. “Redbone” draws most of its creative energy from a GloRilla operating at the absolute peak of her powers. Meanwhile, Baby raps at a constant six out of ten—nothing shockingly off-base, but how could he miss the mark if he’s not even taking risks? So if someone in the year of our Lord 2025 thinks, “Hey, there still aren’t enough generic Lil Baby songs,” then by all means, this album is recommended.
Interestingly, despite regular controversies, Lil Baby seems to have fallen far behind his former tag-team partner Gunna since the pandemic. But WHAM shows why: whatever Baby might theoretically have in energy and flow, he spoils a thousand times over in his beat selection. Instrumentally, WHAM is an absolute dud.
Just look at the instrumental for “F U 2x,” a track sitting prominently at number three in the tracklist. What we hear is a limp synth pad over the 808. Maybe you’d cut it some slack if you heard nothing else, but that ridiculously loud snare roll that imagines itself on some campy, experimental Chief Keef beat. But there’s nothing for it to work against; the rest of the instrumental sounds like instant soup. It’s Baby’s first trap beat all over again. And that’s the pattern: one siren here, a sad piano there. Samples? Too expensive. We’d bet none of the involved producers could tell these beats apart from the first five “Lil Baby type beats” on YouTube in half a year. On top of that, many of the beats don’t even have an ending; they just fade out. There’s no outro either—the album just stops. It presumably suggests rawness, but it only comes off as careless.
That’s the problem with mainstream status: if you happen to be in a magic time window, where the very sound you’re working with is the hottest in the world, that’s enough. But Lil Baby is now showing for the second time that he doesn’t belong at the forefront of rap music. He can’t manage to move the sound forward. This album isn’t even the same thing in green. It’s just the same thing with less hunger, no vision, and no growth in personality or voice. So how does a trap song become a trap hit? Look at the long list of people still doing it—even now—and you’ll see that they’re the ones who add a little twist to the formula. WHAM doesn’t have a single track that even attempts the necessary individuality.
Subpar (★★☆☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Dum, Dumb & Dumber,” “Redbone”