One of the most celebrated releases in hip-hop last year came from Lil Baby. His October album It's Only Me was his first solo full-length project since 2020's My Turn and its subsequent deluxe. It's Only Me came with a whopping 23 songs and runtime over an hour. The features for the LP included Young Thug, Nardo Wick, Future, EST Gee and more. Additionally, producers like Murda Beatz, Wheezy, ATL Jacob and Tay Keith all contributed to the project. Baby provided a handful of promo singles for the album too, such as "Heyy" and "In A Minute."
In its first week, It's Only Me achieved staggering numbers. Fans had been dying for Baby's return for months, and surely showed it when the project first dropped. On the Billboard Hot 100 the week following his release, Baby occupied 25% of the chart. A quarter of the songs on the Hot 100 included Lil Baby, and 21 of them were It's Only Me songs. Baby was the youngest artists to achieve this feat. The album also ended up selling 216,000 units and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Lil Baby Goes Platinum
Now, just over four months removed from its release, It's Only Me has reached another milestone. Typically a signifier for success, the LP reached platinum status on Sunday (Feb. 19), according to Chart Data. Selling 1 million total units in the United States, this is now Baby's fifth album to go platinum, solo or collaborative. It first went gold in November, but unlike prior tapes Street Gossip and Too Hard, it was able to get over the platinum hump.
One main storyline for the album during its release week was the shots Baby threw at Akademiks. Rapping that Ak "know he ain’t as rich as me" on "From Now On" and "n****s think they can’t get touched" on "Top Priority," Baby did not hold back. Akademiks took issue with this, responding with: “Lil Baby dissed me instead of Fani Willis (DA of fulton county) and his real opps.. Wat is Rap music.” Regardless of the small beef, Baby still proved to pull off a successful release. It's Only Me going platinum is just another testament of Baby's star power, regardless of the critics.
