I
THINK I MIGHT JUMP,” SAYS DABABY, A
mischievous smile creeping across his face.
It’s a balmy October afternoon outside,
but there’s a palpable buzz inside New
York’s Gotham Hall, where the 27-year-old
rapper — whose Kirk just debuted at No. 1
on the Billboard 200 — is perched perilous-
ly on the ledge of the mezzanine, 30 feet
above the ground.
DaBaby is entering the second hour
of filming a three-song performance for
Showtime’s late-night talk show Desus &
Mero, and the production crew’s cries of “Don’t do it,
Baby!” echo through the cavernous space. Relishing
the view — and, apparently, the anxiety emanating
from the rapt viewers gazing up at him — DaBaby
stretches his wiry 5-foot-8-inch frame along the
ledge with his legs swinging below. “Don’t worry,” he
says playfully. “I do my own stunts.”
He holds everyone in suspense for a few ex-
tra seconds, then dismounts and returns to the
performance area. It’s time for his last shot of the
day, and he’s ready to focus. When the director calls
“action,” DaBaby seamlessly shifts from jocular
daredevil to fiery MC, bobbing and weaving to the
beat of his punchy club-banger “BOP.” His smile is
magnetic, and he knows it, flashing his teeth at each
camera that comes his way before ripping into the
opening verse.
If DaBaby seems amped up, it’s for good reason.
After signing with Interscope Records in late Janu-
ary, the artist born Jonathan Kirk quickly emerged as
one of the most inventive new voices in hip-hop. In
April, following the release of his debut album, Baby
on Baby, his song “Suge” debuted at No. 87 on the
Billboard Hot 100, ascending to a No. 7 peak by July.
A gifted lyricist with side-split-
ting wit, speedy run-on-sentence
delivery and bruising punchlines,
DaBaby immediately stood out in
the current trap-heavy rap land-
scape, where catchy ad-libs reign
supreme. And what made him a
solo star made him an in-demand
feature, too: Just ask Megan Thee
Stallion, Gucci Mane and Chance
the Rapper, all of whom have
recently benefited from the charm
and confidence DaBaby lends to
a verse (to the tune of a six-figure
price tag per feature, according to
his team).
“He’s really funny. The gangstas
like him. The girls like him. I think
he’s going to be a movie star,” says
Interscope Records executive vp
Joie Manda. “I think we’re just at
the beginning, and he’s going to be
here for a long time.”
DaBaby’s potential longevity
owes a lot not only to his tech-
nique on the mic but to his knack
for self-marketing. He first made
headlines in 2017, when a video
of him walking around Austin’s
South by Southwest wearing noth-
ing but a diaper and jewelry went
viral. This May, when he got into a fight with fellow
North Carolina rapper Cam Coldheart at a Louis
Vuitton store, DaBaby recorded and posted it on In-
stagram — and soon after, he sold T-shirts mocking
Coldheart and celebrating his own “knockout.” The
video for “Suge” (directed by frequent collaborator
Reel Goatz) was a de facto advertisement for his
high-octane charm: Flaunting fake bodybuilder
muscles, DaBaby channeled the energy of Ludacris
and Busta Rhymes into a hilarious three-minute ride
that drove the single up the Hot 100 to become his
highest charting yet.
In person, he appears bigger than in his videos,
and more mature too, despite his boyish features
and deep dimples. Today DaBaby is wearing a
black turtleneck, Burberry sneakers and three
diamond chokers, including one with an icy “Kirk”
pendant — an outfit he’s unlikely to ever repeat.
(As always, he carries a duffel with extra design-
er duds, should he decide to make a costume
change.) Purchasing — and dispensing — luxu-
ry fashion has become a bit of a hobby: He has
autographed bags of clothing he has worn and
left them for fans to find on the street, and at his
upcoming Rolling Loud performance he’ll throw
his Louis Vuitton belt and Gucci boots to the
audience. After the director calls “wrap,” we head
into his Sprinter van, where he plows through two
Shake Shack burgers, though he’s not kicking back
yet: He’s due for a fitting with hip-hop fashion leg-
end Dapper Dan for the upcoming BET Hip-Hop
Awards, where he will win best new artist.
To DaBaby, this level of success isn’t surprising,
and he insists it was no accident, either. He grew up
in Charlotte, N.C. — not exactly a hotbed of home-
grown rap talent — living with his single mother
and two older brothers, but he
remained close with a father who
he says helped him fine-tune his
grammar. Though DaBaby says
that as a kid he was an eloquent
speaker and a voracious read-
er, he was also drawn to street
life. It wasn’t until 2015 that he
decided to pursue rap full time,
at first calling himself Baby Jesus.
(He’d abandon the name a year
later, fearing the moniker would
become distracting.)
“When I get bored with some-
thing, I’m done with it,” he says
matter-of-factly, chewing his
burger. “Running around in the
streets started feeling repetitive.
I just felt like I mastered it.”
Performing at “hole-in-the-wall
spots” around Charlotte, he
earned admiration for his dynamic
stage presence and husky delivery,
eventually attracting the attention
of South Coast Music Group CEO
Arnold Taylor, who signed him to
the independent label and produc-
tion company in 2016. (Manda and
Interscope Geffen A&M execu-
tive vp urban operations Nicole
Wyskoarko signed DaBaby to
Interscope in a joint venture with SCMG early this
year.) “We had Petey Pablo and J. Cole [from North
Carolina], but we didn’t have anybody in Charlotte,”
says Taylor. “He’s fearless.”
The following year, DaBaby proved his work
ethic, releasing six projects (including four install-
ments of his Baby Talk mixtape series). Then, last
November, he dropped the Blank Blank mixtape, his
best, and smartest, release yet: Instead of overstay-
ing its welcome with a lengthy tracklist designed to
gain streams, the project’s tight 10 tracks show-
cased his natural humor and charisma. “I haven’t
seen too many people in life work like him,” says
Manda. “He’ll do 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a
week, and then ask, ‘What else should I be doing?
I feel like I’m not doing enough.’ It’s not like he
uploaded a song to SoundCloud or put a video on
YouTube and it went crazy overnight. This guy
really built this from the ground up.”
Whether he can sustain that momentum may de-
pend on his actions outside the studio. Shortly after
Blank Blank’s release, DaBaby was shopping with
his family at a Huntersville, N.C., Walmart when,
he alleged, two men threatened him with a gun,
and in the ensuing altercation DaBaby shot and
killed one, a 19-year-old. He claimed self-defense
and in June was only found guilty on a concealed
weapons charge, receiving a sentence of one year of
unsupervised probation. Then, in September — four
months after the Louis Vuitton store confrontation
— DaBaby punched a concertgoer who he says tried
to steal the chain off his neck at the Prime Festival
in Lansing, Mich.
“At the end of the day, any legal situation that
I got going on, I wasn’t in the wrong,” maintains
DaBaby. “And I’m the type of person, if I ain’t
wrong, I’m gonna stand on that. I don’t lose no
sleep at all with having shit going on. I just let the
work overpower the shit.”
And right now, that’s what seems to be hap-
pening for him. Kirk, a heartfelt tribute to his late
father, is a commercial hit — all 13 tracks have
cracked the Hot 100 — and DaBaby’s name has
swiftly become synonymous with chart success far
outside the core hip-hop universe: Major pop stars
like Lizzo, Post Malone and Lil Nas X have roped
him in for remixes of their own hit records in the
hopes of driving them further up the ranks. And
DaBaby already has his eye on a future beyond his
own stardom: In 2018, he started his own indepen-
dent imprint, Billion Dollar Baby, to which he has
signed Stunna 4 Vegas, Rich Dunk and 704Chop.
“I’d bet the house on me every time,” he says with
a shrug. “I do it every motherfucking day — and I
ain’t been wrong yet.”
In “Old Friends,” you rap, “Since ’94, I knew
I was going to be a millionaire.” You weren’t
even 5 then. Did you always foresee this level
of success?
I just had that mindset to never settle. That’s a credit
to my pops, too. He used to say “the sky’s the limit”
every time we talked. “Never be complacent, always
strive for more.”
It has been six months since his death —
where’s your mind at?
THE
TEAM
MANAGEMENT/
LABEL PARTNER
SOUTH COAST
MUSIC GROUP
Arnold Taylor, CEO
Daud “King” Carter,
co-founder/vp
LABEL
INTERSCOPE
RECORDS
Caroline “Baroline”
Diaz, senior director
of A&R
Garrett Williams,
marketing director
Nicole Bilzerian, head
of urban marketing
AGENT
MAC AGENCY
Andrew Lieber
40 BILLBOARD • OCTOBER 19, 2019
GROOMING^BYCHECHELJOSONAT^ DEWBEAUTY^AGENCY&
POWER PLAYERS 2019