Last month, Lil Baby released his protest anthem “The Bigger Picture” and was commended by Atlanta politicians for his Black Lives Matter activism. Speaking with Rolling Stone, the 25-year-old said he was inspired to release the song and get involved in ongoing protests due to his own experiences with the criminal justice system and police officers in Atlanta.
“I’ve been a victim of police brutality,” he said in the new interview. “I’ve been in prison where white officers control you. I’ve been in a court system where white judges give you a different time than they would give someone white. There have been times I had a physical altercation with an officer, and he then grabbed me and took me to a room where there’s no camera.”
“We have a physical altercation and left me in a room for about an hour. I’m in there yelling and screaming. I’m so accustomed to it, we don’t even make it no big deal,” he continued. “Where we come from, we’ve got so accustomed to something going wrong. Right? Ain’t nothing we gon’ be able to do about it. I’m from Atlanta, where they had a unit of police that got dismantled for police brutality. The Red Dogs got dismantled for using way too much force. . . . That sh*t an everyday thing where I’m from.”
Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” has gone on to become his highest-charting song and raised money for The National Association of Black Journalists, Breonna Taylor’s family’s attorney, The Bail Project and Black Lives Matter. The powerful track describes the ongoing protests, the rapper’s own traumatic dealings with police and more.
“I just rap about my life — all my songs are basically about me,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was at a point where I felt I needed to say something… Now, this sh*t counts. You gon’ hear me.”
Revisit “The Bigger Picture” below.