Lil Baby continued to celebrate the release of his new album WHAM with a performance on The Tonight Show on Tuesday, Jan. 7.
The Atlanta rapper appeared on stage in a lone spotlight before launching into “I Promise,” a song that finds him recalling the highs and lows of his pre-rap career as a dealer, as well as reflecting on a tumultuous relationship. “All you need is someone solid/I promise, you’ll get over that,” Baby sang on the chorus, his live backing band giving the instrumentals an extra punch. “I come straight up out a war-zone, I’m used to being scarred up/Can’t lie though, that hurt a lil bit.”
Along with his Tonight Show performance, Lil Baby dropped a new deluxe edition of WHAM last night with four additional tracks. As it stands, though, the expanded version of the LP isn’t available on streaming services and is only available to purchase (for $4.99) on the Motown Records website.
One of the four new tracks, “99,” features a guest verse from Future, marking his second appearance on the album after “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber,” which also includes Young Thug. And as Stereogum notes, one of the other tracks, “Running Shit,” appears to feature a diss directed at Gunna over the plea deal he took in the YSL gang trial: “I don’t care what he did, he a rat still/ And I said what I said, don’t @ me.”
(Gunna’s plea, it should be noted, did not require him to testify against his other co-defendants or cooperate with the prosecution.)
Lil Baby released WHAM last Friday, Jan. 3. The album marks his first studio effort since 2022’s It’s Only Me, and along with Young Thug and Future, it features guest appearances from Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Glorilla, Rod Wave, and Rylo Rodriguez.
