In Baby, he saw someone with the voice, style, and respect required for success in Atlanta rap’s ecosystem. With a salt-and-pepper beard and slow gait, he’s the calm at the center of Quality Control’s constant hurricane. K is the power broker behind the millennium’s first cadre of Atlanta legends (Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane) and those shaping the city’s future (Migos, Lil Yachty). It was Coach K who noticed something in a 17-year-old Baby the young dealer had yet to see in himself. “They probably get like 30 grand a show, but they’re doing three, four shows, so they come back with 50, 60, and I might win the whole 50.” “They was getting money, but goddamn,” Baby says, still incredulous. It’s not because he doesn’t have the funds to give, he assures the room. To this day, he says, he still hasn’t paid certain parties back from the nights when his hot hand went cold. Baby is detailing a night when acquaintances chipped in money in hopes of seeing one of his winning streaks up close, the type that would leave everyone chasing him across the city to win their cash back. ![]() As ashes hit the floor, Kevin “Coach K” Lee, the founder and COO of Quality Control, appears, as if endowed with a sixth sense for moments when Baby might say something that will land him in trouble. Satisfied, he packs the dice up while finishing a blunt the size of Kawhi Leonard’s middle finger. Within a couple of seconds, all of the money returns to Baby’s hands. “You got to just keep shooting,” he says. I maintain that he never told me, and look to his crew for support that never comes. It’s complicated, but under Baby’s tutelage I - eventually - win $200, and reach for the pair of hundreds on the floor. There are additional rules: 4-5-6 is an automatic win, so is rolling two matching numbers and one 6 1-2-3 is an automatic loss. For example, the young rapper rolls a 4-4-2 and explains that his score would be two. “The object of the game is to get two of these the same,” Baby says. Every time he throws the dice he snaps his fingers, trying to will the numbers to his cause. Baby, born Dominique Jones, is a patient and methodical teacher, calmly answering my inane questions about throwing technique. ![]() ![]() Inside the headquarters of Quality Control, the most successful hip-hop label currently operating in Atlanta and home to Migos, City Girls, and Lil Yachty, three green dice bounce against the wooden floor. Outside, torrential rain falls on a collection of cars worth many, many mortgages. The 25-year-old rapper has spent the past 15 minutes teaching me to play cee-lo, a dice game that helped make him famous in certain Atlanta circles long before he reached legal drinking age. ![]() “That’s where ‘F**k tha Police’ originally came from, that feeling of ‘fight the establishment and fight for us.Lil Baby has four pockets stuffed with cash, and he’d like to keep it that way. “We’ve become so divided as a nation, and when you get that very strong feeling of ‘our side against their side,’ you are going to get songs like this,” Bakula says. The urgency in Lil Baby’s track to stand up for his community could become an anthem that stands the test of time, just like the older protest songs that still resonate. All have been featured on curated Black Lives Matter playlists across streaming platforms as listeners seek insight and catharsis from Black artists. Other releases include “I Can’t Breathe” by H.E.R., “2020 Riots: How Many Times” by Trey Songz and Keedron Bryant’s “I Just Wanna Live,” which went viral and landed the 12-year-old a record deal with Warner Records. “The Bigger Picture” is one of more than a dozen protest songs released by Black artists in the month following Floyd’s death-a response of unprecedented proportion in the streaming era, according to Nielsen’s Bakula.Īfter Lil Baby’s hit, Meek Mill’s “Otherside of America” was the second most-consumed new protest song in June with almost 18 million streams, followed by Beyonce’s “Black Parade,” which surpassed 7.5 million streams in just six days.
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