Lil Baby’s Net Worth: How Much Money Has This Rapper Earned?
Lil Baby's net worth is estimated at around $8 million, a massive sum considering his rough rise to fame.
The world of hip-hop music is a constantly changing one. From the various styles of music to the many new artists, hip-hop is as popular now as it has ever been. It’s why we’ve already looked at the net worth of massive sensations Cardi B and Kendrick Lamar.
But another one of the hip-hop artists who has been making noise is Lil Baby and his net worth is proof positive that he is a voice to be reckoned with.
LIL BABY’S NET WORTH IS ESTIMATED AT $8 MILLION
From where he started in life to where he is now, it has been quite an impressive turnaround. Debuting his hip-hop music in 2018 with his studio album, Harder Than Ever, Lil Baby began building his net worth at a fast clip. His first album was certified as Platinum and eventually reached number three on the Billboard 200 chart.
In 2020, Lil Baby’s net worth climbed even higher as his second album, My Turn, topped the Billboard 200 chart along with the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. It also went three times Platinum.
He’s released a number of singles since then, collaborating with Drake, Nicki Minaj, and J. Cole among others.
In the years since Lil Baby hit the charts, his net worth, according to multiple sources, has climbed to a nice sum of $8 million and rising. Getting to this point, though, has been no easy task.
LIL BABY WAS BORN IN 1994 IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA
He came into this world on December 3, 1994, as Dominique Armani Jones. Born in Oakland City, a neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, he was only a “Lil Baby” of two years old when his father left, leaving his mother to raise Jones and his two sisters. Baby’s mother is an ex-Marine who ended up working in the post office.
“He was the only boy, and I had two girls,” Baby’s mother, Miss Lashon, told Rolling Stone in a 2020 interview with her son. “I spent a lot of time with him. He didn’t really have anybody.” Then Lashon touched on Baby’s absentee father. “I guess you can’t miss what you never had. It wasn’t like his father was in the picture and then took off.”
At this time in his life, there was no way of knowing that Lil Baby’s net worth would actually be worth anything. In fact, the chances that Lil Baby, who began to get that moniker when he was around 16 years old, would even make it out of the Oakland City neighborhood alive was in question. This was the time he began to get “real money” by dealing drugs.
First, let’s go back to how he earned his name, Lil Baby. He says it was given to him by a man named Wicced. “I used to be going to sleep wherever, I used to leave my trash everywhere. Typical little baby shit,” Lil Baby admits. “They start calling me Lil Baby.”
HE DEALT DRUGS AND WENT TO PRISON FOR TWO YEARS
Lil Baby actually began growing his net worth well before he became one of the most famous rappers on the planet. At the time, it was all through the illegal selling of drugs.
He quit high school to become a full-time drug dealer. “Needed the money, more than anything,” he told Rolling Stone. “I knew all the drug dealers around my neighborhood. When I was like 10, 11, I was hanging out with a dude who was like 17. He was getting money to buy a car, having his own little spot. So he was a lot of my motivation, too.”
The drug dealing got him what he wanted. By the time Lil Baby turned 17, he was in two condos that went for around $2,000 a month. But it wasn’t easy to keep what he had. During this time, Baby was sent to jail three times. When he turned 20, life changed drastically for the then-drug dealer.
His very bad ways finally caught up to him and put a massive crimp in Lil Baby’s net worth. A weapons and drug charge sent him to prison for nearly two years. “You gon’ have to be there to actually just fathom what it was like. It’s misery,” he said of his time behind bars.
According to Lil Baby, five of the 20 or so people he knows serving a life sentence are close, personal friends of his. He refers to Quality Control, his label, and their studio space when he describes a prison life sentence.
“Imagine just sitting in QC until you die,” he says. “Whether you do everything I tell you to do, you’re in here until you die. So you ain’t living no other purpose, until you die. Man, that’s a fucked up way to live. I’d rather everybody just — you get a life sentence and they just take you in the back and kill you. I guarantee you, you asked half of the people who got a life sentence if they’d rather be taken out back right now and killed, they’ll say yeah. Guaranteed. Because what are you living for?”
LIL BABY WAS CONVINCED TO BECOME A RAPPER
If given a choice now, Lil Baby would probably immediately choose to become a rapper over dealing drugs. But back when it was presented to him by Quality Control’s founder, Kevin “Coach K” Lee, Baby was more than content with his life of dealing drugs and a dice game called cee-lo. In fact, Baby would wait for Quality Control’s up-and-coming rappers to return from shows and he would pounce.
“They was getting money [from performing], but goddamn. They probably get like 30 grand a show, but they’re doing three, four shows, so they come back with 50, 60, and I might win [from playing cee-lo] the whole 50.” But give credit where credit is due. Coach K saw something in the young Lil Baby that would eventually set him on his way to building his net worth.
“I remember one day, we was standing outside the studio,” Coach K recalled. “I’ll never forget this. He had on all white, and I was just like, ‘Baby, man, why don’t you rap? Like, you got the swag, you got the lingo, you get respect around the city from the east side to the west side to the south side. Why don’t you rap?’ He used to be like, ‘Coach, I’m a street nigga.’ He used to laugh at me.”
Eventually, though, Lil Baby was convinced that becoming a rapper could be a life changer for him. So, rappers like Gunna and Young Thug became his mentors and taught him the business. What they all found out quickly was that Lil Baby was good. He was very good, as the music charts and his growing net worth have shown.
LIL BABY HAS TWO SONS
On top of Lil Baby’s growing net worth, he also has a growing “family” of sorts. With his former girlfriend, Ayesha, Lil Baby has one son. After that relationship ended, he dated model Jayda Cheaves. In February 2019, Cheaves gave birth to Lil Baby’s second son.
HE HAS CONTINUED TO HAVE LEGAL ISSUES
There is no doubting the effect Lil Baby has had on the world of Hip Hop. Lil Baby continues to grow his net worth based on the music he produces.
Unfortunately, there are some things in his past that he doesn’t seem to want to give up, and it is causing him some issues. Lil Baby, along with NBA superstar James Harden, was in Paris in 2021 for Fashion Week when both men were taken into police custody.
Harden was eventually let go, but Lil Baby remained in custody on suspicion of transporting illegal drugs. As it turned out, the pair, along with Lil Baby’s bodyguard, was stopped because of a strong smell of marijuana emanating from the car they were driving. After remaining in custody for a while, both Baby and his bodyguard were let go. While neither was held long, they both did end up being fined for having 32 grams of cannabis in the car.
LIL BABY IS ON INSTAGRAM
Lil Baby sees no problem in promoting himself or his friends on social media. At the moment, he has nearly 22 million followers on Instagram and loves to show off what his net worth can get him.
Dominique Armani Jones, aka Lil Baby, has come a long way from his rough upbringing and his net worth is proof positive that his rapping style is still on the rise.
