DaBaby Blew Up. But Can He Settle Into Stardom?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/arts/music/dababy-kirk.html

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LOS ANGELES — Earlier this year, just as the North Carolina rapper DaBaby was hurtling into the hip-hop stratosphere with his hit single “Suge,” he was resting for a rare minute at home in Charlotte when he was awakened by a stream of calls and messages.

First came the news that his father had died suddenly in Nashville. Stunned and full of questions, DaBaby, born Jonathan Kirk, could hardly grasp the gut-punch of the tragedy, in part because someone wouldn’t stop calling him on the other line.

When the rapper finally answered, it was his road manager. “‘You No. 1 — you did it!’ He’s screaming — it sounded like he was doing back-flips, ecstatic, just going crazy,” DaBaby recalled. “Baby on Baby,” his major-label debut, had hit the very top of the Apple Music albums chart, setting him on a path to becoming perhaps the year’s premier breakout rap star.

The emotional whiplash of that moment, DaBaby explained coolly, was something he has gotten more used to in the last year, as his exponential ascent has been repeatedly interrupted by flashes of harsh reality, including his involvement in a fatal shooting and numerous alleged assaults.

“I’ve had to process it all on the go,” said DaBaby, 27, who interrupted a sold-out tour to bury his father and then flew back out that night, all while recording a new album on the road.

“Kirk,” his third project in 12 months and second album this year, was released on Sept. 27 via Interscope, with features from Migos, Chance the Rapper and Gucci Mane, and is expected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. The 13 tracks begin with “Intro,” the most personal song of DaBaby’s career, which touches on his father’s death and the upheaval of his new reality. But the tenderness is short-lived as DaBaby gets right back to the things that have quickly become his trademark: bouncy, jabbing beats with a rapid, percussive tumble of cartoonishly menacing punch lines and audacious, uniquely blush-inducing sex raps.

But while his musical formula is dominating streaming services, making DaBaby the most inescapable, in-demand collaborator of the summer (see: Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cash ___,” Post Malone’s “Enemies” and many more), he must also quickly level out into a reliable brand and businessman to solidify his arrival into hip-hop’s fickle top tier. Though DaBaby’s rise has felt more organic — and for rap, nearly old-fashioned, based largely on undeniable verses, beats and outlandish videos — compared with the meme-driven phenomena of a 6ix9ine or Lil Nas X, it has not been without its extracurricular viral moments, most of them controversial at minimum.

In videos that have proliferated across local news stations and the rap internet alike, DaBaby has beaten the literal pants off an aspiring artist who was harassing him in a Louis Vuitton store (and then made a T-shirt out of it); punched a handsy fan who reached for his chain at a show; and become a defendant in an ongoing lawsuit after members of his team attacked another aspiring rapper who had been badgering him for a photo in Boston, among other violent incidents. And while the chaos of his climb has done nothing to slow his momentum or entree into the pop mainstream — in fact, it may have even helped — it definitely feels unsustainable.

“As my circumstances have changed, I’ve had to move in a different way and make some adjustments,” said DaBaby, who along with his team declined to address specific occurrences, but has insisted that he has only ever been protecting himself. His manager, Arnold Taylor, added, “He’s street, but we ain’t thugs — that’s the difference,” and echoed the need for more discretion and security as DaBaby’s notoriety has increased.

“We just need to move different and evolve,” Taylor repeated as a general refrain.

Across two days in Los Angeles the week of his album release, DaBaby, who is compact like a cannonball, with an alpha manner and deep dimples, only ever seemed professional and locked-in, fully aware that stardom was his for the securing.

Repeatedly, he flexed his prodigious work ethic and people-pleasing skills, crisscrossing the city for a nonstop slate of performances, interviews, handshakes and other obligations that come with the social-media-soaked music industry of today. With a crew of about a dozen at all times — including a relatively new security guard who resembles an oak tree built out of multiple smaller oak trees — the rapper was punctual and accommodating, hitting all of his marks while sneaking FaceTime kisses to his 2-year-old daughter.

In less than 24 hours, DaBaby managed to accomplish a blur of tasks including: a college show for some 10,000 undergrads interested in moshing; a 6 a.m. wake-up to announce “Kirk” via social channels; a dance session in an Airbnb to tease a new song on the video platform Triller; back-to-back radio station interviews; a promo shoot for a streaming service (“Alexa, play DaBaby”); a multiple-hour taping for a web series; another one-on-one interview; two more radio station sit-downs; and a club appearance, all of which, of course, was documented for Instagram.

“I’ve been a machine for a while now,” said DaBaby, nearly hoarse from the marathon of self-promotion, though it was not even half-done and would continue into the next week and beyond. But more work, after all, was what he had been working toward.

DaBaby, who was born in Cleveland but raised in Charlotte, started rapping only as an adult about five years ago, and initially under the name Baby Jesus, which he eventually changed out of concern that it had become a distraction. At the same time, distractions designed to go viral were part of his early blueprint, like the time he walked around the South by Southwest festival in Austin wearing only an adult diaper and jewelry.

For a time, “My internet presence was definitely bigger than the music,” DaBaby said. “I’m so good at marketing, so once I knew I had them looking, I turned up with the music. I knew what I was doing — it was premeditated.”

Taylor, his manager and a former radio and promotions executive at major record companies, recalled seeing DaBaby in North Carolina clubs around the time he was launching his own South Coast Music Group label. “I didn’t even know if he was a rapper, I just knew he had a big entourage with him and was moving like a rapper,” he said.

Once the pair teamed up, they focused on a well-worn path: building buzz around the South with mixtapes and club shows, while DaBaby found his sound. Though he initially futzed with Auto-Tuned vocals and repetitive melodies, à la Travis Scott and Migos, the rapper started finding more traction with ferociously rapped freestyles over existing hits, a somewhat lost art that he said he learned from Lil Wayne.

Now, with years of melody dominating the upper echelons of rap, DaBaby’s throwback dedication to mostly just rapping helps to set him apart. “When I started coming on my music the way I was coming on freestyles — just relentless, at your neck, as soon as the beat starts, that’s when everything really clicked,” he said, adding that he has now worked with many of the artists whose songs he was unofficially remixing, including Lil Baby and Offset.

Through his deal with Taylor’s South Coast Music Group, DaBaby signed a short-lived distribution deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation for the “Blank Blank” mixtape that would prove to be his breakout last fall. But like 50 Cent and Gucci Mane before him, DaBaby’s climb to name recognition was attached to a shooting — a tragedy that was gossiped about until it took on the near-mythic weight of a superhero origin story, while also carrying real-life consequences.

In November 2018, just days after the release of “Blank Blank,” DaBaby was shopping with his daughter, her mother and another child at a Walmart in Huntersville, N.C., when he has said two men threatened him with a gun. During an altercation, he fired a shot that left a 19-year-old man dead. DaBaby was eventually found guilty of a misdemeanor — carrying a concealed weapon — but was not charged in the death.

The Mecklenburg County district attorney’s office said in a statement to The New York Times that it had “reviewed the police investigative file and agreed with the Huntersville Police Department’s decision not to charge Kirk further as prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.”

DaBaby would only say that he was “blessed,” and that his close calls in life were motivation to keep achieving more. Since the shooting and the release of his “Baby on Baby” in March, his profile has even expanded to the Top 40 sphere, where he has added guest verses to hits like Lizzo’s No. 1 smash “Truth Hurts” and Lil Nas X’s “Panini.”

Caroline Diaz, an A&R executive at Interscope who is assigned to DaBaby’s musical development, said it was important to maintain a careful balance between crossover moments and content true to the rapper’s base, with his own albums remaining pure. “He could’ve thrown a Lizzo or a Post Malone on there — that’s what everyone expects — but it’s still a hood album,” she said of “Kirk.” “His project is so street, but then when you look at his features, he’s able to do everything.”

Still, despite the rapid professionalization of DaBaby’s career, an air of unpredictability and easily raised hackles mingled with celebratory moments in Los Angeles.

At his U.C.L.A. student concert, security was tight and the rules were explicit — no smoking, no drinking, no jumping in the crowd — but DaBaby tested the limits, getting as close as possible to an audience that seemed to be teetering on the edge of mayhem. “Don’t go out there?” he triple-checked with his manager onstage during the performance, gesturing to the crowd. He flashed a mischievous grin, but held back.

“They would’ve kept my money,” he said after. “It would’ve been bad business.”

The next day, on a busy stretch of Fairfax Avenue, DaBaby soaked up the attention that came with sitting, door open, in the back seat of a parked SUV as shoppers and pedestrians passed. He was noticeable, if not exactly approachable, when at one point, a young, sweaty man whose car had broken down only feet away began rather loudly, and rudely, requesting a photo with the rapper.

DaBaby stayed silent, shaking his head, as his team encouraged the increasingly agitated man to mind his business and walk away, but the growing tension was incontrovertible. “I’m never listening to him again,” the man said, before miraculously getting his beat-up car to start and driving away.

Moments later, a group of nine children with backpacks and headphones noticed the rising star in their midst, and began murmuring, eyes wide. They lurked and gawked, tentatively pulling their cellphones out before one got up the nerve to ask for a photo. DaBaby, his grin gleaming with diamonds, hesitated for a second before agreeing to a single group shot with the now-joyous crew.

As they all parted, DaBaby slipped one boy a crisp $100 bill and told the group to split it, slipping back into the relative safety of the SUV as they sprinted down the block squealing.