I haven’t seen this take before so I thought I’d put it out there: Lil Baby is, according to the conventional understanding of the term, an extremely successful industry plant.

Here’s the evidence:

– Lil Baby knew Coach K and P of QC records prior to rapping, and was encouraged to start recording by them because, as he puts it, they recognized that he had an “authentic story” (which they could market).

– Baby was signed to QC records immediately after he started rapping in 2017, and his very first mixtape was released by them.

– At the same time, Baby was also being materially assisted and guided by other prominent friends in the music industry that he knew prior to becoming a rapper, such as Young Thug.

– QC started promoting Baby heavily on sites like Worldstar all the way back in early 2017 before he had cultivated much of an organic fanbase by himself.

– Although his first couple projects were quite generic, Baby eventually developed a buzz through QC’s shrewd marketing and promo, and once this occurred he was immediately showered with high profile features from Drake among others; something that would have never happened to him as an independent artist. These high profile features were in no small part responsible for the commercial performance of his breakout project, “Harder Than Ever”.

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I’m not saying Baby isn’t a good artist or that he doesn’t deserve his success. But….I think if an artist with a less “authentic” story and middle class background had this kind of relationship with a major label prior to blowing-up, lots of people would reasonably accuse them of being an industry plant.

But what do you guys think? Am I being unfair?