Young Thug Talks About Paying Lil Baby to Rap Because He Believed in Him
Written by SOURCE on November 20, 2020
Sometimes, the people around you can see your greatness and potential before even you can. In the case of Lil Baby, Young Thug explained while on T.I.’s podcast expediTIously with Benny the Butcher that he knew Baby could rap before even he realized it.
“Lil Baby went on record in saying that you used to pay him just to focus on rap,” T.I. asked Thug. “That n***a didn’t know who he was,” Thug responded.
“I used to read that young n***a’s captions on his pictures and call him like, ‘bruh, you know you can rap.’ He in jail like, ‘bruh, I’mma goddam get out, I’mma goddam get me some money, get me a bag and do what I need to do.'”
The two then talked about how Thug knew Baby before he went to prison because they lived near each other, and that the real reason he was paying Baby to rap at first was because he wanted to show him how he could really shape his life around it.
“Just to groom him to you really could get paid from doing it, like, no cap,” Thug explained.
Lil Baby has talked in-depth about how much Young Thug has helped him in the past, both financially and by encouraging him to keep going.
“I was already going to the studio,” Baby told The Breakfast Club in March. “He was on some sh*t like, ‘You got a chance in rapping. Not even a chance. Like you’re gonna make it rapping. You can’t even be chilling.’ He would FaceTime me and see where I’m at, and he like, ‘Damn you ain’t even at the studio?'”
“My mind wasn’t where Thug’s mind [was] at because I hadn’t been through what I’ve been through now,” he continued. “Now I appreciate everything he said and I understand everything he said. It still put something in my head, but I still couldn’t see it.”
The trio also talked about how influential Young Thug has been to music in general, and Thug responded by talking about how much rappers before him influenced his work and made him want to make music in his own unique way.
Watch the entire episode of T.I.’s podcast expediTIously featuring Benny the Butcher and Young Thug up top. Jadakiss and Rapsody also make appearances in the episode.
