Lil Baby admits he’s hesitant to speak on certain issues and events that dominate headlines; but when it came to the Black Lives Matter protests, he felt it was important to support the cause through his music rather than a simple Instagram post.
“I’m not into social media like that. I post on social media and interact, but I don’t really catch what’s going on or what people are saying,” he explained during a recent interview on The Beat with Ari Melber. “But at the time [of the George Floyd demonstrations], everyone thought, ‘Baby wasn’t gonna say nothing.’ I don’t really wanna just speak on situations, especially when I don’t know the whole backstory—something I say might get misinterpreted, so I’m quiet as far as me posting something [on social media].”
Baby said he doesn’t believe social media posts do anything to help causes or situations, but acknowledged he has a platform that can be used to raise awareness on issues like racial justice and police brutality.
“I speak through my art … I’m not posting nothing. It ain’t work like that,” he continued, “’Cause I really feel some type of way about the whole situation. So I’m not gonna be a George Floyd advocate only … It’s deeper than that with me. I know people, personally, who got killed by the police. That would be fake of me to post about [Floyd’s murder] when I ain’t even post about somebody I know who is going through [something similar].”
So rather than address the issue in a written statement, Baby chose to release “The Bigger Picture”—a Grammy-nominated song that tackled the broken criminal justice system.
“In a time of uproar about that [Floyd] situation, I took it upon myself to speak on the whole thing,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna make just a George Floyd song. I mentioned what kind of happened in the song, a little bit, but it was the whole [issue] … It wasn’t just that incident, because it was bigger than that incident—not to saying that incident was not bigger than other incidents, but it was just my chance to speak on the whole thing.”
Baby explained “The Bigger Picture” was inspired by his life experience, but the outcry over Floyd’s death gave him the opportunity to speak on the problems plaguing Black communities.
“I seen the uproar, and now it’s easier for me to make a song [about it],” he said. “Because I’ve been living like this.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Baby speaks on his visit to the White House, why he chooses to live in Atlanta, and being named “Best Rapper of 2020” by Complex.
You can watch the full sit-down above.
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