Source: Jason Koerner / Getty
The recent album from DaBaby hasn’t performed as well as his previous releases, prompting the rapper to believe that he’s being blackballed by the industry.
The “Bop” rapper’s latest album, Baby on Baby 2 was released last week. Initial sales projections estimate that the LP will move 16,000 album-equivalent units for that first week. In comparison to the numbers that his 2020 album Blame It on Baby made in the first week, which was 124,000 units along with debuting number one on the Billboard Hot 200, the amount for his new release does seem a bit paltry.
For DaBaby, the news was an occasion for him to give himself some props and add his own conclusions via his Instagram stories. On Wednesday, he wrote: “Not bad for da BlackBalled Baby” which accompanied the album statistic and a flexing muscle emoji. Apparently, he’s not alone in his assessment. Meek Mill has publicly said that he feels that DaBaby is being shunned by the music industry. “They blatantly black balling da baby,” Meek posted on Thursday (Sept. 29), via Twitter. “Not my business but ima observer.”
DJ Akademiks also offered his own opinion, which included a shot at another media figure, Ebro Darden. “Da Baby last project in 2020 ‘Blame it on Baby’ sold 124K first week,” the media personality wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “His new project after being blackballed by Ebro, Apple Music is scheduled to do less than 20K. Now yall understand my Ebro convo…. DSPs control who is hot and who is not. Fall out of favor with them.. UR DONE.”
Ebro would respond later on that evening via Twitter to Akademiks’ statement. “Apple Music is not the only platform. Based on this dummy’s logic, Da Baby should be doing well on the platform HE works for. Is it?”, he wrote.
DaBaby has had a hard time regaining some of the traction he built up in his career since his infamous homophobic rant at Rolling Loud Miami last year. After doubling down on defending his statements, he issued an apology to the LGTBQ+ community only to remove the statement from his Instagram page just days later. DaBaby is set to go on tour to promote the album, with the first date in Minneapolis, MN on Oct. 27. The tour will wind through twelve other cities before ending in LA on Nov/ 19.
