Lil Baby Says He Never Fell Off — and He’s Ready to Prove It With “Fresh”
Written by Kiss Media on 31 October 2026
Lil Baby has heard the “fell off” talk for years — and he’s officially done entertaining it.
The Atlanta superstar sat down with The New York Times’ Popcast on Thursday, October 29, ahead of his upcoming album “Fresh,” and made his position crystal clear: in his mind, there was never a slump to come back from.
“To me, I don’t have fall-off periods,” Baby explained. “And what I mean by that and why I don’t is because nothing changed from [the few years I didn’t have a hit single] to [my current hit single] ‘Dead Fresh.’ So it’s like, when would I be in a slump? It don’t change that you put out a hit.”
He doubled down on the point, saying the level he’s operating at doesn’t shift with any single song’s chart run. “The level I’m at, if I put out a hit, if I don’t put out a hit, it don’t really change for me,” he said. “Now, I put out ‘Dead Fresh’ and now I’m doing shows but I been doing shows. Now even though that amplifies and keeps you going, but it’s not where I could feel it.”
Baby also addressed the narrative from a different angle: he believes fans hyper-focus on him while rappers who actually fell off harder barely get mentioned. In his view, that constant conversation — even the negative kind — is proof he’s still operating at the top of the game and still relevant.
The conversation also turned to his relationships with other Atlanta artists, including the long-rumored tension with Gunna since Gunna’s plea deal in the YSL case. Baby was clear that whatever issues exist, they will never play out in public. “I think as a whole, whether I [don’t] like them or they [don’t] like me, we’re kind of all gonna be on a personal vibe,” he said. “And that’s what I do commend Atlanta on, because we could not like each other, but we gon’ play cool for y’all. It’s an unspoken thing. […] We got a problem, we can handle our problem off the internet, in person. Just us. Because at the end of the day, we’re still for the town, for Atlanta. So us going at it, no matter who’s winning or whatever it makes us looks bad as a whole.”
That loyalty to the city runs through everything Baby does, and it’s a big reason his fanbase rides so hard for him. The fall-off conversation, he argues, misses the bigger picture: the shows never stopped, the work never stopped, and now “Fresh” is on the way to close the argument for good.
Watch Lil Baby’s Pharrell-produced “Dead Fresh” video below, embedded from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXxbEfhtDiM
Are you feeling Lil Baby’s new era, or do you think the “fell off” talk had some truth to it? Let us know in the comments, and send your requests our way — hit the request line at +1 302-357-9831. Kiss 101.7 keeps the newest heat in rotation.
Source: XXL and HotNewHipHop
