Lil Baby And Lil Durk's 2020s were cruelly relatable
Some say Lil Baby and Lil Durk “carried” 2020 rap. But they also carried relatable burdens that exemplified the topsy-turviness of 2020.
2020 has dramatically hammered home the gulf between everyday people and insulated celebrities. With every $80K purse flouting, maskless extravaganza, and idiotic statement, it became clearer how little we have in common with certain tax brackets.
But that’s not the case across the board. Lil Durk and Lil Baby are two artists not just loved for their music but admired for their resilience. A brief Twitter search reveals that many people feel like they “carried” 2020. But they did so carrying tremendous burdens of their own.
Both artists lost close friends to gun violence this year. Both came from poverty, and incarceration, to reach the cultural steeple they now occupy. Durk is still fighting the justice system in an ongoing case, while Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” was a resonant anti-police track in a year full of them. They’re two of the most unfortunately relatable entertainers. Their timelines reflect the emotional rollercoaster that was 2020. Like us, in 2020, even their wins are steeped in suffering.
Drake’s “Laugh Now, Cry Later,” which features Lil Durk, feels like one of the year’s brightest musical moments. And in a year that’s been an across-the-board disaster, bright moments meant more than usual. Cardo’s triumphant horns were the set-off. Drake’s subdued chorus gave the track an ominous gravitas. But it was Durk’s verse that took the song over the top.
His appearance was short, but he jolted the track, offsetting Drake’s artful apathy with a fervor. Durk’s been a cult favorite, but not widely acknowledged for his early 2010s contributions to the syrupy, melodic brand of rap that artists like A Boogie and NBA Youngboy now run YouTube with. Durk’s appearance on the track affirmed that Drake knew his impact. A Drake collaboration is a career-defining moment for most artists, but it could merely be a silver lining on a bittersweet 2020 timeline for Durk.
The 28-year-old noted his open “case” for a 2019 Atlanta shooting on the song. And if fighting that isn’t stressful enough, his co-defendant in the case — and right-hand man — King Von was fatally shot after a fight outside an Atlanta hookah lounge.
Immediately after Durk’s verse, Drake makes the glaring falsehood that, “I’ve never been embraced.” It’s no surprise that superstar artists are prone to concocting a victim complex. But for him to say that on a song with Durk, an artist who’s literally banned from performing in his native Chicago for “terrifying his city,” is a lot. Chicago drill was always resented by the city infrastructure for reflecting its purposeful failure of Black people through civic negligence which spurred gun violence. Even before this year, Durk had suffered tremendous loss, with his manager Chino, cousin OTF Nuski, and countless other loved ones dying from gun violence.
Losing Von in November was yet another trial. Durk signed Von after he beat a murder case and brought him down to Atlanta, trying to pull him from the engineered determinism of the Chicago streets. But they allegedly ended up in a violent incident down there in 2019. Both had the shooting case looming over them all year, and Durk still does. But now he’s also dealing with grief, which stains his most commercially successful year.
Lil Baby probably understands that dynamic. His My Turn album was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it earned him his first number Billboard one, and went double platinum. So many fans feel like he was the 2020 rap “MVP.” But before recalling his commercial accolades, he’ll probably lament 2020 for the loss of his friend Lil Marlo in a July shooting. Marlo was the first name Lil Baby mentioned on his breakout “Freestyle” track: “Marlo my dawg, that's for sure, we won't fall out about shit.” After Marlo’s death, Lil Baby captioned the following in a since-deleted IG post:
"Dam Thug !! You kno what come with this shit that’s why I battle myself with straddling the fence. It’s like don’t to much good come out this street shit few niggas get away but you don’t hear about them that often !! Streets a stepping stool to the next level !!"
His caption exemplifies how loss can shape perspective. Losing Marlo to the streets made Lil Baby further ponder how he’s navigating his own life. So many of us can identify with that struggle this year, with COVID ravaging the world and taking so many of our peers, friends and loved ones, leaving us with seemingly nothing but idle time to ponder the figurative fences we straddle. Over 1.8 million people have died from COVID worldwide. Even in the throes of quarantine gloom, locked away from holidays, routines, and the mundanities of the outside world, we only have to check the news to realize it could be worse.
The torrent of coronavirus casualties reminds us how precious each day is. No matter where 2020 propelled, pushed, or plummeted us, we’re all still here with the chance to navigate our internal battles, whatever they may be. While COVID and gun violence are two different scourges, they both stoke grief, our shared burden that transcends specifics in the pursuit of comfort. So many of us can commiserate with what these young artists are going through in their grieving processes, money and fame disparity be damned.
Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” was celebrated by fans and critics for augmenting June’s anti-police demonstrations. But he was also condemning the beast responsible for the normalization of gun violence that cost Marlo and King Von their lives. Both police brutality and intra-communal gun violence are manifestations of a state dependent on Black death. When activists fight to defund the police, they’re fighting to create a better, poverty-free world with those funds. This summer, Lil Baby told Atlanta Congressman Antonio Brown “this is what matters” while protesting in Atlanta. He, like so many of us, pushed to re-prioritize social justice.
Lil Durk and Lil Baby experiences intersected with so many of 2020’s prevailing trends, from rappers facing gun violence to the ongoing fight against white supremacy.
For them, like us, even golden moments are merely silver linings in a gloomy azure of grief. Despite their trials, though, they’ve persevered. The rap year ended in part with Lil Durk dropping The Voice, a long-awaited project that he dedicated to Von (who was featured on “Still Trappin”). Durk deserves respect for having the fortitude to release music so soon after Von’s passing. He, like Lil Baby, taught us that while our career doesn’t define us, it can be an outlet for our pain if we desire it to be. In a year full of awful lessons from celebrities, we can thank these men for some positive, ever-relatable ones.
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Venmo: Andre-Gee
Absolutely brilliant. Still a bit stiff.
A couple questions as always:
1 - do u think the villainous attacks on drill will cease once those who grew up on the music are the generations in charge of Chicago, or will the wheel turn and a new black genre will face that demonization?
2 - which Lil Durk song off The Voice shows how far he’s come?
3 - what are your plans for this newsletter? Will it fall by the wayside as you commit more work to Complex or will this continue alongside whatever staff/freelance job you have?