that would’ve happened had I listened to the
majority. I was the one person who was like,
nah, I’m going right now.”
He’s especially attuned to the visual, mak-
ing videos that feel colorful and alive. In “Goin
Baby” he gingerly gives bottles to baby dolls
aboard a private jet. In the music video for
“Suge,” he’s walking around funny, like a car-
toon mailman that accidentally stepped into
the material world. And then there’s “Bop,”
with 170 million views and counting. Dancers
are in the street jumping, twerking, body
rolling. Then, halfway through his first verse,
DaBaby just sort of saunters into the frame
casually—surrounded by women who aren’t
mobbing him but flanking him. It’s the kind of
music video that doesn’t really amount to any-
thing except that it’s impossibly fun to watch.
His 2019 culminated when he re-created the
video on Saturday Night Live’s tiny stage last
December, and it almost seemed more buoy-
ant: managed chaos, a dancer twerking upside
down while doing the splits, with DaBaby in
the middle of it all, serving as the ringmaster
in a Larry Johnson Hornets jersey, licking his
lips and clapping along.
THE DIMPLES CAME from his mom, he says.
(“I look just like her.”) Music and his deep
granddaddy voice came from his father. Last
year, DaBaby learned of his father’s death
the same day that he found out his debut
album had vaulted to the top of Apple Music’s
albums chart. His father passed away without
warning. He raps about it on Kirk’s opening
track, “Intro”: You know how I rock behind
my daddy / You know I never gave a fuck
about the world, just about my family / How
the fuck I make it to the top same day I lost
the nigga that had me? “He was just big on
music. He used to have The Source magazine,
XXL magazine,” says DaBaby. “He had a set of
those little conga drums in his crib, the two
little drums, and he would just beat on them.”
When DaBaby was a child, his dad got him a
keyboard with a percussion kit, and he made
rudimentary recordings in his closet because
he was bored and it was something to do. He’s
still grieving his father, and making music
helps. “I wouldn’t even call it a distraction,”
he says. “It’s therapeutic. Or else I’m just hold-
ing it in. And if I hold it in, I’m leaving no
choice but to be a≠ected by it.”
He loves the agility that being newly rich
a≠ords, bringing a professional-grade studio
with him wherever he goes. He doesn’t write
anything down, and he could set up right here
on this restaurant patio and make a song if he
wanted to, he says. “Everywhere we go. Every
flight we get, it comes with us.” It makes sense
that his signature move while performing is
to slouch down and pound on his thighs, like
a cranky baby not getting enough attention.
If creativity strikes him, he wants to be ready
to hop on a beat that instant.
DaBaby is hyper-competent; he hates
wasted time and wasted ideas. He makes
music urgently, just like the way he starts rap-
ping the millisecond the beat begins. James
Rico, who directed the video for “Bop,” said
DaBaby recorded the song late one night,
after they’d just wrapped another video
shoot—and that’s what sets him apart from
other rappers. “Honestly, in the end, it’s gotta
come down to the work ethic,” says Rico. “He’s
someone that really wants it.”
He was born Jonathan Kirk, or “Lil
Jon Jon.” He grew up in Charlotte, North
Carolina, and still lives there amid a con-
tinual cycle of shows, appearances, fittings,
interviews. It’s not that Charlotte hasn’t his-
torically produced many rappers—Charlotte
hasn’t produced any rappers of note. The city
has a rap scene that local stars rarely breakfollow him around, bought drinks for DJs,
and made custom T-shirts emblazoned with
his name. “I still have that shit from when
I first started rapping,” he says.
He quickly realized that he was as gifted
at marketing himself as he was at rapping,
partly because he was a natural pitchman
and partly because he’d studied those who
had already arrived. “Not only did I feel
I made better music, I just lived a lot of life
before music. Sold so many things. I knew
how to sell this,” he says, motioning to noth-
ing in particular but everything in general,
“before I knew how to sell music.” (“This
being...?” I ask him to specify. He shrugs and
smirks. “Whatever.”)
Then, over the course of a year, his asking
price for features went from the high hun-
dreds to six figures. “Now, even if you got sixout of. Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, and
Memphis produce hitmakers; rappers from
Charlotte have to raise a fuss to even book a
venue. “It definitely has a crabs-in-a-barrel
mentality,” DaBaby says of his hometown.
“I made something out of nothing.” He
repeats himself, solemnly stressing every
single syllable. “I made something out of
nothing. Nobody’s ever even gotten close
to even coming out of Charlotte the way we
came out of Charlotte. And not only that: I’m
the number one artist in the world right now,
the hottest artist in the world.” He doesn’t
shrug when he says this, or apologize for how
it might sound. He says it plainly, as if he’s
telling me that I have food in my teeth.
Part of the reason he broke out of Charlotte
is because DaBaby never imagined himself
in competition with local artists. When he
started rapping, a little over five years ago,
he saw his competitors as the ones leading
the Billboard charts. “From the very first song
I ever went in a real studio and made, it was
better than a lot of people’s real music,” he
says. At the time he was rapping under the
moniker Baby Jesus, which he eventually
shortened to DaBaby. “I knew that I’m better
than a lot of people who are famous for this
shit. I knew it immediately, and I took it seri-
ously from the second that I decided I wanted
to start rapping.” He recorded a mixtape and
created a logo. He hired a videographer tofigures, it’s still like, I got to see if I want to do
it type of shit. Nothing short of a blessing.”
These days DaBaby doesn’t have to raise
a fuss to book anything. “I just got booked
today for $300,000 for one show,” he says. “I
just got paid $150,000 just for them to put my
name on the fucking flyer. I used to do shows
for $500. I used to do them for fucking free.”YOU KNOW WHY these bitches love me? he asked
flatly on yet another song he stole, Megan
Thee Stallion’s “Cash Shit.” Where another
rapper would go for something seductive,
or even a playful brag, he launches into it
plainly: ’Cause Baby don’t give a fuck.
Meg starts her verse o≠ playful, sexy, cool,
declaring that if a man is hungry, her you-
know-what is the kitchen. Then DaBaby
jumps in like a firecracker and doesn’t
mince anything: I be fixin’ the weave while
she suckin’ my dick, he raps. Pull it out, then
I titty fuck.
The New York Times called this aspect of
his music “uniquely blush-inducing.” My
mom called it “I don’t know what this is, but
change it.”
DaBaby knew of Meg a little, from sharing
lineups with the Houston rapper and seeing
her on Instagram. He had tunnel vision for his
own work and wasn’t particularly moved by
the idea of doing another feature. But she was
promising, his A&R was pushing it, and it hadI
madesomething
out
of
nothing.Nobody’s ever evengotten close to even comingoutof
Charlotte
the way wecame out of Charlotte.