Songs 2020 #2: Lil Baby's "Bigger Picture"

 It’s hard to imagine a musical form more suited to 2020 than trap, and it’s hard to imagine an artist tackling it better than Lil Baby does here.

The record starts with the sound of thunder and striking (but halting, uncertain) piano. It’s a soundtrack for the uprising after George Floyd’s murder. It ends with the crowd shouting, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

Then, as if harnessing breath control from the streets, Lil Baby begins to talk about what he’s seen all his life, memories and thoughts on memories spit in desperation. People being shot after being told to freeze, moms breaking down with sons in prison, friends packing weapons to keep their heads, everyone being harassed every second of every day by what can only be called an occupying force.

That kick drum and 808 has turned the thunder into another force under the crowd’s control, the keys all but doubled with the snare in insistent emphasis on each shift in the lyric.

He’s telling you why he’s here in the streets even if he knows it’s just a step in a process—“You can’t fight fire with fire, I know, but at least we can turn up the flame some.” He knows he’s surrounded by the blind following the blind, but they’re working this chink in the wall that’s beginning to shine some light.

And then there’s that refrain:

“It’s bigger than black and white/It’s a problem with the whole way of life…”

He’s clearly not turning that call inward, it’s outward. As he’s already mentioned, it’s the whole system. It’s all the questions we can’t even figure out how to ask.

He continues, “It can’t change overnight ---right.” He knows he’s at a stage in a process, and he knows it’s a leap of faith to work it. “But we gotta start somewhere/Might as well gone head start here/We done had a hell of a year.”   

Truer words have never been spoken, and a truer rap, a truer use of hip hop, musically and politically, shouldn’t even be looked for. This is an anthem for 2020 in the streets. And it’s all the better for being reflective. It deals with fears and vulnerability and limitations and the greatest yearning of them all, for a little bit of peace only possible with justice.

 Bigger Picture Official Video                        Bigger Picture Rap Life Live