The deeply moving and timely record cemented Lil Baby’s role as the indisputable, authentic voice of today’s youth culture. At the Grammys Lil Baby rendition of the influential protest anthem featured appearances from Run The Jewels’ Killer Mike, activist Tamika Mallory, and actor Kendrick Sampson.
The intro from James Baldwin, when in the 1960s he dared criticize the American dream as related to black people, set the tone. Joining Lil Baby were Tamika Mallory, who has dedicated her life’s work to fighting for equality and social justice as an advocate for gun control, feminism and the Black Lives Matter movement: Insecure’ star Kendrick Sampson who founded the organization BLD PWR for new development, empowerment and change within marginalized groups and American society; and GRAMMY award-winner Killer Mike, half of the acclaimed group Run the Jewels and a songwriter, actor, and activist.
“My performance is important to me and I had to make sure it was right. Nominations aside, actually performing “The Bigger Picture” means the most to me. I paint pictures with my songs and wanted the performance to bring that picture to life. Just like with the song, this performance had to reflect the real. No sugar-coating. My family, my fans and my city know who I do this for,” Lil Baby.
Lil Baby’s seminal album My Turn recently went RIAA-certified triple-platinum, and was the #1 selling and #1 steaming album in the US in 2020 garnering over 7 Billion streams to date. Instead of resting on his laurels after a chart-topping release, during the 2020 protests surrounding racial injustice, Baby quickly returned with his own perspective on “The Bigger Picture”. The song offered Baby’s brutally honest take on race relations in America, and quickly became a driving force behind the movement. After the song’s release, My Turn returned to the top of the Billboard 200 three months after its February release and spent 5 weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (tying Taylor Swift for most weeks atop the list in 2020).
His groundbreaking year continued with tying Prince and Paul McCartney for Billboard Hot 100 hits, being named Vevo’s Top Performing Hip-Hop Artist of 2020, MVP on Rap Caviar, and at the Second Annual Apple Music Awards he won the top award of Global Artist of the Year. He performed several of his standout tracks at the 2020 BET Awards and the 2020 AMA’s, and his moving performance of “The Bigger Picture” at Apple Music’s Rap Life Live event was in itself a standout moment of 2020. His ever-expanding list of accolades earned him high praise from the media and landed him on the cover of Rolling Stone.
In 2021 My Turn Deluxe is now certified triple platinum. His December release “On Me” has also gone on to receive an RIAA-certified platinum status and has since reached over 220M global streams.