Lil Baby Plays Fallon & New York Pop-Up Show, Disses Gunna On WHAM Deluxe Edition
On Friday, Atlanta rap star Lil Baby returned with his new album WHAM, which had a bunch of big-name guests and which basically kicked off the rap year. Baby only announced WHAM shortly before its release, so it didn’t get a big, noisy rollout. Instead, Baby is giving that album its rollout now. In the past day, he’s played The Tonight Show and a free pop-up New York show, and he’s also dropped a music video and a deluxe edition with bonus rap-beef content.
Let’s go with the Fallon performance first. On the show, Lil Baby had a live band behind him, and he performed the relatively inward-looking WHAM track “Promise.” Baby isn’t exactly an electrifying stage presence, but he’s got enough touring reps in that he can seem smooth and professional in a situation like that.
Last night, probably around the same time that The Tonight Show was airing, Baby also gave a performance at the Manhattan club Irving Plaza. It was a free show, announced earlier that day, and I guess he had his actual babies up onstage with him. It looks like a mob scene.
Last night, Baby released a deluxe edition of WHAM with four new tracks, but it’s not on streaming services. Instead, as Uproxx reports, you have to pay $5 to buy it from Baby’s Motown Record store. (This is presumably an attempt to improve Baby’s chart numbers. Good luck beating Bad Bunny.)
As Uproxx notes, the bonus tracks include another appearance from Future, and Baby is saying that he’ll release another new album later this year. One of the bonus tracks is called “Running Shit,” and it includes another shot at Baby’s former partner Gunna, who seems to still be persona non grata among his fellow Atlanta rap A-listers after he copped a plea in the Young Thug RICO case. Baby reportedly says, “I don’t care what he did, he a rat still/ And I said what I said, don’t @ me.”
"I don't care what he did, he a rat still / And I said what I said, don't @ me"
— Lil Baby on 'Running Sh*t'
(WHAM Deluxe) pic.twitter.com/u8KJ7ajWwh
— Kurrco (@Kurrco) January 7, 2025
Finally, Baby also dropped a video for “By Myself,” a WHAM track that he did not record by himself. Instead, that song features melodic pain-rap stars Rod Wave and Rylo Rodriguez.
The point of all this is to remind you that WHAM is out now on Quality Control/Motown/UMG.
