WHAM is the fourth album from Atlanta melodic rapper, Lil Baby. Something I’ve noticed about his career having listened to a decent amount of tracks by him, as well as ones that feature him, is that he’s great at putting out singles, but most of his albums are just a mixed bag. Songs like, “Southside,” “Woah,” and “The Bigger Picture,” are absolutely phenomenal trap anthems, but when it comes to making a consistently strong record it seems like he struggles a bit. However, is this new album any different? Here are my thoughts.

    The strong point of this album is easily the features. There are some decent solo tracks like the intro track, “So Sorry,” and “F U 2X,” but most of the tracks feel monotonous and way too similar to each other. Young Thug and Future’s contributions to the song, “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber,” basically carry the song, as the instrumental is really repetitive. Lil Baby’s flows are incredibly inconsistent, I really like his rapping on “F U 2X,” as the melodic fast-paced rapping is catchy and anthemic, but on tracks like, “Redbone,” he just sounds like he’s half asleep and unmotivated. Lil Baby “I Promise,” is a yawn-inducing love-sick track with a repetitive melody that often is off-beat. While some of the beats are strong and hard-hitting, the majority of them sound very generic and lazy. My favorite tracks on the record are easily “By Myself,” featuring Rod Wave, and “Stiff Gang.” “Stiff Gang” has these incredibly cinematic violins and hard hitting snares in the beat, and producers Wheezy and Southside truly did a great job on making it. The other features on the album I like, besides the ones on “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber,” and “By Myself,” is “Stuff,” which features Travis Scott. Travis’ signature echoey, auto-tuned vocals provide a jolt of electricity to an album, that is mostly very lacking in charm and energy. 

    This isn’t a terrible album, by any means, but it’s definitely not great. Lil Baby in my opinion, is better as a singles artist, rather than an album artist, as his presence on the tracks aren’t really interesting or engaging, in fact, oftentimes the featured artists outperform Lil Baby and make you feel as if Lil Baby is the feature, not the main artist. To put it simply, this album is incredibly boring and really doesn’t add much to the current hip hop scene. Lil Baby really peaked back in 2021 and since then it really feels like he’s fallen off hard.

Overall Score: 4/10

Favorite Tracks: “So Sorry,” “F U 2X,” “By Myself,” “Stiff Gang,” 

Least Favorite Tracks: “Redbone,” “Say Twin,” “I Promise,” “Outfit,” “Drugs Talkin,”