In March, my editor and I joked on Slack about the proliferation of the name Baby in rap right now. That conversation quickly turned into the piece, The Best Rappers in the World Are Babies. From there, the headline spun off into an in-magazine graph, incessant questions from social media on why I didnt include more babies on my initial lists, and constant explainingthat Lil Baby and DaBaby are, indeed, different people.
The fact that Im writing about a music video called Baby by Lil Baby and DaBaby six months later is now difficult. My critical adoration for the two rappers hasnt decreased, but my ability to make jokes about rap babies has plummeted. There are only so many funny infant-adjacent headlines one man can engineer in a calendar year. Regardless, the duos video, which doubles as a Scarface homage, is predictably entertaining and painfully obvious a hallmark of DaBabys work. Is a rapper truly a rapper if their favorite movie isnt the 1983 Al Pacino-starring, gangster vehicle? The Daps-directed visual features both Baby and DaBaby recreating the classic chainsaw, bathroom scene, albeit with more jewelry. Its worth four minutes of your time, if youre willing to not think about it too hard.