Album Review: Lil Baby Impresses in the Spotlight on 'My Turn'
In what is debatably Lil Baby’s best album to date, he and his marquee features deliver a consistent hour-long project.
Written by Thomas Galindo
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Lil Baby’s name has always seemed fitting. Being a protégé of Young Thug, along with Drake cosigning him early on and giving him a feature verse, and signing to Migos’ Quality Control label has made Lil Baby seem just like that — a little baby version of his trap idols. Lil Baby has delivered quality material since his come up in 2017 with “Drip Too Hard (Feat. Gunna),” “Yes Indeed (feat. Drake),” and “Freestyle,” but his career always seemed assisted by his counterparts in the rap game. In what seems like a self-aware title for his second studio album — aside from a litany of mixtapes — My Turn shows a determined Lil Baby ready for his own spotlight in the new decade.
To start the project, Baby brings a focused cadence and catchy melody with the song “Get Ugly.” Much of the beginning of the 61-minute album has a similar sound of succinct, rapid fire bars, as heard in “Heatin Up (feat. Gunna)” and “Grace (feat. 42 Dugg).” On Lil Baby’s prior solo project, Street Gossip, it seemed like he was too preoccupied with crooning and chasing ballads instead of focusing on his bars, so My Turn is a nice change of pace. The strength of the tracks and features start to heat up in the middle of the project, starting with “Live Off My Closet (feat. Future).” The opening bar of his verse “I'm a hyena, since everyone G.O.A.T.'s,” further displays his determination to make a name for himself in a field of rappers with tons of notoriety and established fan bases. Even on the feature-heavy tracks, Lil Baby is still able to hold his own among some of his more seasoned peers. For example, Lil Baby opens both of the back-to-back songs “Commercial (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)” and “Forever (feat. Lil Wayne)” with a strong verse, before allowing the respective features to come in and take over the song with their trademark flows.
The end of the album slows down a bit in quality, with phoned-in verses and hooks that don’t seem to hit as hard as those earlier in the project. At 20 songs, the album has a few throwaways that Lil Baby could’ve done without, such as “Hurtin” and “Solid.” But that certainly doesn’t take away from the impressive showing through the majority of the album, including the singles “Woah” and “Sum 2 Prove” that helped build anticipation for this project. The rollout for this project began in November when he dropped his first single “Woah,” following up with an album announcement in December. The second single for the album, “Sum 2 Prove” dropped on Jan. 10. It was clear from the singles that Baby was locked in and knew he had something to prove. From the drop of “Woah” to the end result of My Turn, the execution of this release demonstrated Lil Baby’s transition from up-and-comer to veteran in the rap game.
Photo courtesy of Quality Control
My Turn shows Lil Baby confidently establishing his sound as opposed to him chasing a sound highly comparable to that of his mentor, Young Thug. It seems that Baby knew a career path in Young Thug’s shadow wouldn’t garner him the commercial and personal success that he craved. This album was a crucial moment for Lil Baby’s role in the rap game, and he stepped up to the plate with a cohesive, career-elevating project full of bangers like the previously-mentioned singles, “Woah” and “Sum 2 Prove,” as well as “Emotionally Scarred” and “No Sucker (feat. Moneybagg Yo).” Although his previous projects had hits like “Life Goes On (Feat. Gunna and Lil Uzi Vert)” on Harder Than Ever (2018) and “Pure Cocaine” on Street Gossip (2018), there were wide gaps in quality between the hits and the rest of the project, and Lil Baby made sure to rectify that on My Turn with a well-rounded, entertaining listen throughout.