Ahead of his latest album, My Turn, Lil Baby sat down for an interview with The New York Times to open up about the nature of the project and talk about his career as a whole. When asked about his previously disclosed addiction to lean, the Atlanta rapper admitted to referencing drugs in his songs that he doesn’t even take.
In addition to explaining that he’s trying to rap less about doing drugs, Lil Baby revealed that he no longer takes Percocet:
I’m trying. Because I done rapped about drugs that I don’t even take. People think I take ’em and then people take ’em thinking I take ’em. Like popping Percs [Percocet]. I don’t pop Percs—period. Every now and then, I used to take a half of one, but I say it in my raps because I might pop one and that’s what’s going on.
In a January 2019 interview on Genius’ series For The Record, fellow Atlanta native Future made a similar admission about quitting lean.
“I didn’t wanna tell nobody I stopped drinking lean. Because then they’ll be like, ‘Oh his music changed because he ain’t drinking lean no more. I can hear when he changed it,’” he said. “It just be hard when your fans used to you a certain kind of way, a certain persona. You be afraid to change.”
Lil Baby struggled with his lean addiction before quitting the codeine drink cold turkey in April 2018. He told The New York Times that he still drinks “a little bit here and there.”
Lil Baby has referenced Percocet on songs like ‘Stick on Me’ and ‘Cash.’ On the latter song, which is taken from 2018’s Harder Than Ever, he raps about taking a pill with lean:
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Fuck the gym, I don’t work out
Take a sip of the lean, wash the Perc down
Recently, Billie Eilish was caught in a controversy for stating that rappers lie in their lyrics, but it seems she was right all along.
