A few months ago, just as the quarantine era was starting to set in, the young Atlanta melodic rap star Lil Baby released the big, splashy, pretty good album My Turn. Today, Lil Baby has followed up the album by taking a very different turn, releasing the benefit protest single “The Bigger Picture.” He’s pledged that all proceeds from the song will go to “support the movement.”
“The Bigger Picture” opens with samples of newscasters talking about George Floyd’s murder, widespread protests, and brutal police responses to those protests. Then, over a hard drum clap and a dramatic piano, Lil Baby goes into vent-mode, sing-rapping about his own experiences and those of the people he’s known: “It’s too many mothers that’s grieving/ They killing us for no reason/ Been going on for too long to get even/ Throw us in cages like dogs and hyenas.” But as the song goes on, Baby talks about the need to make deep societal changes: “It can’t change overnight, but we gotta start somewhere/ Might as well gon’ ‘head, start here/ We done had a hell of a year.” At the end of the song, Baby is rapping over Black Lives Matter chants.
It’s a personal issue for Lil Baby. As a teenager, before he got famous, Baby spent two years in prison on marijuana possession. “The Bigger Picture” is a stirring and ultimately optimistic song, and I honestly found it pretty moving. Listen below.
“The Bigger Picture” is out now on the streaming services.
