DaBaby recently sat down for an interview with Beats 1’s Ebro Darden to promote his latest album, KIRK. During the conversation, they discussed how the North Carolina rapper balances mainstream songs like Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts (Remix)” with more lyrical features like Dreamville’s “Under the Sun.” DaBaby brought up his co-stars on the latter track, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, as examples of artists whose music can go over some people’s heads on the first listen.
“If I listen to a Kendrick verse, J. Cole verse, I hear everything they’re saying the first time I listen to it,” said DaBaby. “I understand it. I can digest it. I can really listen to it. A lot of people can listen to shit like that and it goes over their head. A lot of people just want to hear the beat.”
According to DaBaby, he’s able to balance the best of both worlds because of his upbringing. “When it comes to the music, the traits you got to have in order to make lit music, club music, to have the swag with it, to have the lingo, I got those traits just from my environment and how I came up,” he said. “And I got the brains to be able to play around with words.”
To illustrate his point, the Billion Dollar Baby founder spoke about how his breakout hit, “Suge,” was inspired by actually going to the bank and finding out his check from Interscope had cleared. He then recorded the song in 10 minutes based on the feeling of having real money for the first time.
On the track, DaBaby raps:
Say I’m the goat, act like I don’t know
But fuck it, I’m obviously winnin'
Don’t make me go hit the bank and take out a hundred
To show you our pockets are different
“I got the wordplay, I got the vocabulary to be able to really, really rap,” DaBaby added.
Although both Kendrick and J. Cole’s lyrics may go over some people’s heads, that hasn’t stopped them from commercial success. Counting Black Panther: The Album and untitled unmastered., Kendrick has four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200. Cole has six with the inclusion of the Dreamville compilation, Revenge of the Dreamers III.
Additionally, Kendrick’s major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city—which didn’t reach No. 1—recently became the longest-running hip-hop studio album in Billboard 200 history.
Watch the full interview here, and read all the lyrics to DaBaby’s KIRK on Genius now.
