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Lil Baby performs during the 2024 Rolling Loud festival
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As promised, Lil Baby’s The Leaks is finally here. On Wednesday (Dec. 3), the Atlanta rapper celebrated his 31st birthday by dropping a (sort of) new project.
Much like the title suggests, The Leaks is built from snippets and songs that fans have heard in various forms online over the years. That doesn’t take away from how great the full package sounds. Fans got the complete 15-track set at 12 p.m. ET, the same release time as Lil Baby’s earlier “Wham Wednesdays” drops.
On the opener, “Mrs. Trendsetter,” Lil Baby raps about a woman “thicker than mud,” while “Guaranteed” starts with him cutting straight to the point: “If it don’t make money then it don’t make sense.” Roughly a third of the project consists of tracks that already hit streaming over the past few months, including the G Herbo-assisted “All On Me,” “Otha Boy,” “Try To Love” and “Middle of the Summer.”
Collaborations are the project’s biggest strength, mainly because they sound so different from the rest of the 41-minute offering. “Let’s Do It,” for instance, feels like it could have lived on Metro Boomin’s A Futuristic Summa, with Skooly and Playboi Carti tapping into a sound reminiscent of Atlanta’s 2010s mixtape era.
“Superman” reunites Lil Baby and Young Thug for the first time since UY SCUTI. However, the earlier Gunna and Yak Gotti name-drops fans heard are nowhere to be found. Instead, Thugger raps, “I still shed tears every day ’bout my big homie Troup / N**ga had scared you off, and I said, ‘We run from who?’ / The judge felt bad for me, told me that I can’t f**k with you.”
Additional features across The Leaks include Lil Yachty, LUCKI, Veeze, Rylo Rodriguez and Bino Rideaux. Take a listen below.
The Leaks marked Lil Baby’s first full-length release since WHAM dropped in January. The latter offering housed “By Myself” featuring Rod Wave, “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber” with Thug and Future, and “Redbone” with GloRilla.