Baby S

Originating from Los Angeles’s West Side, Baby S pursues gangsta rap with primary influences drawn from DJ Quik, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and the late N.W.A. member Eazy-E. His flow carries an unmistakably Californian character that signals West Coast origins the moment he begins rapping. He first took up the microphone during grammar school in the 1980s, when exposure to the films Krush Groove and Beat Street ignited his interest. Although New York still controlled rap at the time those movies appeared, the West Coast mounted a serious challenge to the Big Apple’s supremacy by the late 1980s, and Baby S, like many other Southern Californians, fell under the sway of the gangsta rappers emerging from South Central L.A. and Compton. A devoted listener of N.W.A.’s landmark 1989 album Straight Outta Compton, he went on to absorb the approaches of Compton’s DJ Quik and Long Beach’s Snoop Doggy Dogg, which molded both his twangy delivery and his lyrics dense with gangsta and thug life imagery. Along the way he connected with helpful West Coast figures, among them producer Battlecat, noted for his work with Snoop and tha Eastsidaz, and veteran L.A. rapper King T, formerly known as King Tee and counted among Southern California’s earliest hardcore rappers. In 1998 King T placed Baby on the track “Squeeze Yo Balls” from the album Thy Kingdom Come. Later the same year Baby appeared on Kurupt’s hit single “We Can Freak It,” which Battlecat produced. In 2001 he completed his debut album, Street Fractions, for Blast Entertainment/Ruthless Records, distributed by Epic/Sony.