Lil Baby, Jack Harlow and SOB x RBE Try to Reverse the Fall

Three rap albums released on Friday find one-time phenoms trying to relight a flickering star: Lil Baby's FRESH, Jack Harlow's EP Sweet Action II and SOB x RBE's reunion LP From the Land.

Few things spur rappers to action quite like the fear of falling off. Kendrick Lamar once rapped that it was a sickness, and "quite contagious." J. Cole built an entire concept album around delaying the inevitable loss of momentum. "Will I ever fall off? That day will never come / Till the pine box, b****, f*** you! I'm better than I ever was," Eminem rapped defiantly on 2017's "Nowhere Fast," well into a career downturn. To acknowledge a fall-off is to mark the point of no return; the only escape when the precipice nears is for a rapper to rediscover their mojo without the music sounding archaic. Mojo is a fickle thing — tough to pin down, harder still to reclaim.

What does Lil Baby's FRESH actually attempt?

Lil Baby would not be a rapper at all without a push. In 2017, Young Thug, his senior in the Atlanta scene, literally paid him to get in the booth. The origin fit: rap felt second nature, yet Baby's nonchalance betrayed an indifference to craft. The combination paid off. In 2020 he had the most-streamed album and was named Apple Music's artist of the year; by 2023 he was a streaming powerhouse on par with Taylor Swift.

The returns have since diminished. The numbers dipped, and a feud with longtime running mate Gunna complicated public perception. Every album he has released since 2020 has debuted at the top of the Billboard 200, and yet the sense that he has fallen off has followed him like a rotten smell.

In a recent Popcast interview, Baby said he is motivated by a desire to "keep winning": "I don't think my hunger, my drive, could disappear. I think I'm a natural-born hustler. As far as making music, now, I don't know." He added, somewhat counterintuitively: "That's all that's gonna be — hits, because if I can't make hits, I ain't gonna make music no more."

FRESH sounds like a deliberate attempt to get back into rhythm. "Ain't read my first contract, all I knew was a drug deal / Plus the white boy told me, 'Ask 'em 40 mil for the pub deal' / That was 2020, I done ran it up and I'm stuck here," he raps on "Mr. Do Something." That word — "stuck" — is telling. The desire to stay on top can be limiting but also affirming, particularly when coming from struggle.

Is Sweet Action II a course correction for Jack Harlow?

After several out-and-out flops, Harlow is in a tougher position. His March album Monica brought a complete aesthetic transformation — conductor hats and chunky sweaters in service of what a Times style reporter called a "diet D'Angelo impression." Sweet Action II, a sequel to the 2020 EP that produced his breakout hit "Whats Poppin," bears the hallmarks of the original down to the cover photo.

In rap, the sequel aimed explicitly at a bygone version of an artist's success can feel like filing for bankruptcy: Nicki Minaj, The Game, Ghostface Killah, Cam'ron and Jeezy have all returned to the well decades later, with mixed results. Harlow's methods are clear — more laid-back verses from his earliest work, some singing, soundscapes nodding to past and present, a Babyface feature and a Tank sample. Mileage may vary, but the EP is a successful course correction back toward a quintessential Jack Harlow style.

Can SOB x RBE revive a sidelined movement?

Some resets aim at a whole scene. From the Land is SOB x RBE's reunion album, seven years in the making. In the late 2010s the Vallejo crew led a hyphy revival, the buoyant Bay Area subculture popularized by the late Mac Dre; Kendrick Lamar tapped its members for the 2018 Black Panther soundtrack. Solo deals threatened the unit, and when Lul G was found guilty of murder in 2019, SOB x RBE all but disbanded.

The cover depicts three remaining members looking up at a bat-signal projection of the group's logo. "Know the world been waitin', long time comin' / What I spent on how I'm steppin', fifteen hundred," Yhung T.O. croons. It feels like a crew embracing the stakes and picking up where it left off.

Recapturing mojo alone may not be enough, though. Falling off has rarely felt more relative, since success metrics have never been wonkier — the charts formula is being reworked again in 2027. "Hip-hop has fallen off, but I'm hip-hop," Baby told Hot 97. "So when they say 'Baby fell off,' it's whatever — hip-hop at an all-time low, and I'm that." Read charitably, "I'm hip-hop" and "it's whatever" are a package deal: the numbers cannot really disrupt how those in the culture identify with the music. Whether that stance holds once the new charts land is the question all three releases will have to answer.