After his incredible run in 2019 Jonathan Kirk (a.k.a DaBaby), returned with, “Blame It On Baby” for his first project of 2020. After announcing the album only three days before its release, fans were waiting to see how he would follow up his last album, “KIRK”. The Charlotte rapper has had one of the quickest come-ups in the rap game. From gaining traction within the industry with, “Walker Texas Ranger” to be featured on platinum records with pop stars, DaBaby has made quite an entrance. “KIRK”, his biggest project to date, went #1 selling 145,000 units in the first week. “Blame It On Baby” brought in some heavy-hitters for features with Roddy Ricch, Future, and Quavo, so fans were excited to see what DaBaby was going to bring to the table. Unfortunately, for me, it didn’t deliver.
Tracks like, “SAD SH*T” and “NASTY” were attempts to showcase DaBaby’s versatility, but in the end just missed the mark. Different flows came off as poorly mixed, misplaced, and just unnecessary. While people have been making memes of DaBaby for releasing the same type of song, “Blame It On Baby” unfortunately did not do him any favors. The problem with this is that fans will ask for something different, but when they aren’t satisfied with the results they ask for the, “old ______”. Its a lose-lose situation for the artists in terms of approval from fans, but always a win from a monetary standpoint. For example, Playboi Carti just released his new song, “@ Meh” on Thursday and a lot of his fans were happy with the song even though it was just the same recycled song he probably released a year ago. In this case, Carti is going to make money regardless of what he puts out due to his cult-like fanbase of 15 year old kids in the suburbs wearing VLone. And that’s no diss on Carti, because a lot of his songs are amazing, however it is what it is. The same thing with Drake, who’s the biggest artist on earth, and maybe ever. He put, “Ratchet Happy Birthday” on Scorpion and some people really tried to convince themselves that it was a good song just because it was a Drake song. He is one of the most respected artists in the world with an insane discography, but that song was almost disrespectful to himself. Drake, Playboi Carti, and DaBaby are all big artists with large fanbases to support them and they all share one thing in common. No matter what music they release, it is going to make them money. I think that this album from DaBaby was a project full of throwaways which will probably still break records and go #1, because that’s sadly how the music industry works nowadays. If it’s able to get the streams, it’s able to make the record labels and artists money.
DaBaby is still only on his third studio album so he has a long way to go with his career as long as he stays away from the controversy. This album was not a good album in my opinion and it most likely won’t make it in my top 50 of 2020. However, I guarantee you he doesn’t care and he will swim in his millions that he makes off of this.
