WHAM is the name of the new album by rapper Lil Baby, which dropped on Jan. 3. Lil Baby’s new album gives fans a look at his raw vocals shown by the simpler beats and less overpowering instruments compared to his last album It’s Only Me. Overall, the general theme of the album is more vulnerable than past albums with more insight into his life growing up in poverty, his rise to fame and how he handles it all now.
Lil Baby is a 30-year-old Hip-Hop/Rap artist from Atlanta, Ga. His real name is Dominique Armani Jones. He is one of the most dominant names in rap since he first released music in 2017. He is also one of the best feature artists. Fans love it when he is featured on songs, for example, “Wants and Needs” by Drake featuring Lil Baby. Lil Baby’s new album is a fresh look at his life. The album demonstrates his rise to fame overcoming issues like poverty, family conflicts, and trying to get out of the streets. As the album plays, fans get to see some of the new exciting features like GloRilla and more nostalgic old ones like Young Thug. Throughout the album, the lyrics describe the hardships that many people face throughout their childhood into adulthood.
First off, the WHAM album cover was boring compared to his others in the past. The album itself was 15 songs and 41 minutes, which is an ideal length. During our first listen there was not a lot of variation throughout the songs, they all sounded very similar. As fans continue to listen and analyze the album, they will develop individual opinions on each song. Onto features, there was a good amount of features, 5 songs out of 15 had one or multiple features on them. The quality of some of the features needed technical improvement. The length of the features was typically half the song.
Next, the beats on WHAM were simpler and more toned down compared to the more instrumental beats on his previous album, giving more focus and attention to his vocals. With this, it made it easier to understand what he was talking about, but also made it more difficult to differentiate between songs because of the fact the mellow beat sometimes meshed together songs. For the tempo of the beat on the songs in the album, most of them have the same medium speed tempo, which we liked and appreciated. However, one song called “F U 2x” in particular stood out to us for being a super fast tempo and almost overwhelming to listen to. That song was one of our least favorites on the album.
In addition, Lil Baby is known for being a good lyricist. He stands out from other rappers due to his focus on writing lyrics about his life rather than about women. Most rappers talk about women a lot and in an objectifying manner, for example, “I left ten thousand roses on the stairs for you
Hopе you don’t slip and fall on my love
Take care of your bills, you ain’t gotta worry ’bout nothin’
Out with your friеnds on the first of the month
No inconsistence, I’m there for you, constantly.” In Lil Baby’s new song “So Sorry” he expresses his effort and vulnerable emotions towards the women he loves.
In his song “Streets Colder” he talks about feeling blessed to be able to help his family back in Atlanta singing: “I’m a product of poverty, know how to polish this s— up’
My lil’ niece and my nephew them got they college funds tucked
I’ma practice, so I master it, I ain’t dependin’ on no luck.”
On WHAM especially, listeners noticed the song names connect to the song pretty well and it all flows together. We only found there to be two songs that we would call “skips” out of the 15 total. That stands out as a good thing to us because, in his past albums, we have found more skips overall. On this album our personal top three songs are: “Stuff” (featuring Travis Scott), “Due 4A Win” and “So Sorry”. Those three songs stood out to us because of the catchy beat, lyrics and general vibe. However, the highly anticipated song fans were excited for was “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber” (featuring Future and Young Thug). We thought it was kind of a letdown and did not like it as much as they hoped to. We also did not enjoy “Redbone” featuring GloRilla because of the unintelligent-sounding lyrics. We felt there could have been a significantly better choice for who the feature could have been.
Overall, he took longer to create this album than most of his others took, therefore it was highly anticipated. However, the long anticipation and wait of WHAM was worth it and it shows in the quality of this album as a whole. Overall, we would listen to more songs on this album, compared to some of his past albums. We think this because it is new, fresh, and very well written, whereas some of the songs on past albums we never really listened to more than the first few times.
Finally, we give WHAM a solid 8/10 due to his raw vocals, influential lyricism, catchy beats, melodies, and intriguing features. We enjoyed listening to this album because of the new material and as a whole, we really like him as an artist. He has a rare talent that many rappers do not have in our opinion. We would definitely recommend this album to anyone who likes hip-hop/rap music and likes deeper meaningful lyrics.