Lil Baby Sparks Debate By Ranking His Top Five Atlanta Rappers

BY Elias Andrews 5.7K Views
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Lil Baby & Friends
ATLANTA, GA - NOVEMBER 29: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) Lil Baby and Young Thug perform onstage during Lil Baby & Friends concert to promote the new release of Lil Baby's new album "Street Gossip" at Coca-Cola Roxy on November 29, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
Lil Baby is one of the biggest stars in Atlanta hip hop, but he made the decision to put four rappers above himself.

Lil Baby has been hitting the podcasts hard the last few months. The rapper was in promo mode for his latest album, WHAM. He reportedly has another one around the corner, though, so he has continued to shed light on his feelings about the rap game and his own career. Lil Baby recently went on the DeepCut podcast, and was asked the extremely difficult task of ranking his favorite rappers from Atlanta. The host gave Baby four artists to choose from, plus himself, but his ranking sparked internet chatter right away.

Lil Baby balked at the notion of ranking his own music, so he dropped himself to fifth place. "That's hard cuse I don't know how to rank myself," he conceded. From there, however, the rapper ranked four of the biggest names in ATL rap over the last two decades. He placed Playboi Carti at fourth, 21 Savage at third and Young Thug at second. Lil Baby then gave the top spot over to frequent collaborator, Future. "Future, Slime, Savage then Carti," he reiterated. "For sure." The discourse was predictably messy, with dozens of fans criticizing Lil Baby for putting Future over his mentor, Young Thug.

Lil Baby Future Collab Album

Other names who were mentioned as being worthy on the list included Migos, OutKast, and Gunna. The latter is especially interesting, given that Lil Baby and Gunna used to be close before the YSL case made everybody thing Gunna was a snitch. Baby hasn't directly criticized his Drip Harder partner, but he made it clear that he doesn't want to work with snitches. "I'm always gonna look at certain stuff a certain way," he said on A Safe Place podcast. "It boils down to what we rapping about… We can't rap about that if you did that. If I was making Christmas music, then I don't give a damn what you did."

Baby's decision to put Future in first place makes sense. The latter appeared on Baby's last album, and the two are rumored to be working on a full length collab. "Me and Future was working on a joint tape," he told Spotify in January. "We damn near got the joint tape done. Now [Thug] came home and he ain’t going for that. He like, 'Sh*t. And it actually [was] Thug’s idea." Fans can criticize Lil Baby's ranking all day, and they will, but it's worth noting he was given specific rappers to choose from.

About The Author
Elias Andrews is a music and entertainment writer for HotNewHipHop. He joined HNHH in 2024 as the lead night shift contributor, which means he covers new music releases on a weekly basis. In the year since joining, Elias has covered some of the biggest and most turbulent stories in the world of music. He covered the Drake and Kendrick Lamar battle, and the release of the disses “Family Matters” and “Meet the Grahams,” in particular, in real time. He has also detailed the ongoing list of allegations and criminal charges made against Diddy. Elias’ favorite artists are Andre 3000, MF Doom, pre-808s Kanye West and Tyler, The Creator. He loves L.A. hip-hop but not L.A. sports teams. The first album he ever bought was Big Willie Style by Will Smith, which he maintains is still a pretty good listen.