Lil Baby has revealed that he didn't want to release his third studio album, It's Only Me, because he wasn't in the right "headspace" to make music then.
In his conversation with Complex, the Atlanta native recalled how he wasn't fond of his 2022 album It's Only Me. The album was a commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, but received a lukewarm critical reception.
According to Lil Baby, the album was filled with songs he didn't necessarily fall in love with and was a result of his label wanting him to drop a project.
"I didn't even want to put It's Only Me out at the time, because I wasn't ready," Lil Baby said. "I wasn't in [the right] headspace. Those were songs I was just making, but it was nothing that I really loved, and nothing I even really liked. So it was at a point where, if it was up to me, I would've never dropped [It's Only Me]."
He said that he had a "back and forth" with his label, Quality Control Records, which urged him to drop the album.
"So I just dropped, but I wasn't in the right headspace to drop at all," he continued. "I hated those songs. To this day, a couple of those songs I like, but I don't even go to them songs, because you know how some music could take you to a time and place, and you don't even want to go to that place anymore? I'm on a whole different process."
In addition to debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Lil Baby's It's Only Me earned 216,000 album-equivalent units (6,500 were pure album sales) in its first week, as well as 288.97 million official streams. That number was the third-highest one-week stream figure for an album released in 2022.
